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Paradise Street

Here's a question that may be of interest. The sketch on post #59. Is that a picture of Paradise Street and corner of Easy Row as stated or is it a sketch of the corner of Ann ST and Congreave St. with the buildings across the road that were there before the Town Hall was built, I know the railing is there but the shop and bollard on the corner look remarkably similar to the picture on the corner of Ann ST. (see Ann St thread posts #1 and #15) Both buildings were castellated...same height...similar windows but somewhat different but things change over time. The photo #15 would seem to be much later than the sketch and the side of the building shown seems to have been crudely changed a bit.
I think that permission was to be obtained before a building could be castellated back then...could the corner of Easy Row/Suffolk St and Paradise St. have had very similar buildings. On the side of the building in the sketch are letters ALL...any ideas what these were...some kind of beer? The bollard looks familiar but probably they were a common feature on a corner.

Another indicator is that the terain even today does rise up Congreave street which seems to be the case in the sketch but I think that Paradise street was level from what I remember.
The Town Hall site would not have been a greenfield one when it was built and it is hardly likely that the low rise adjacent buildings were added after the building of the Town Hall (to be replaced by the Midland Institute) so close to it. So are these buildings in the sketch, ones that were demolished to make room for the Town Hall.
 
Here is a lightened copy of the Exiles sketch of the back of the town hall :

I think that you can see the Castellated corner shop in the distance beyond the first column and is that the remains of the railing along Congreve St. after the demolition of the old buildings, in the foreground. Maybe left in as a handy teather rail for horses. Where was the flagpole in the distance? There must have been one in Victoria Square...possibly.
 
The castellated building was 'Allin's Cabinet of Curiosities' and the flagpole was on it. It is mentioned within this thread and also the one on Ann Street.
Ted
 
Qk, I thought that I had seen a refference to the flagpole vaguely. Anyway I was trying to establish whether the sketch on post #59 was in fact the same builing so that the street running up would be Congreve St. If that is the case then the old buildings far side on that sketch would be what were cleared away to build the Town Hall (a unique sighting so far) Other than that the building would be a similar one (castellated) on the south east corner at the junction of Paradise St and Easy Row/Suffolk St.

OK, finally got some of the grey cells to work. Allin's thats what the 'ALL' is for so the corner building in the old sketch #1 is the corner of Ann St and Congreve St. and the old houses across are the ones that were there before being demolished to build the Town hall. Relevant Pictures grouped below to see them together. The second one shows the flagpole too. I sharpened sketch #1 a bit to show more detail. That railing is running up Congreve St. Exile and maybe some remains at the back of the Town Hall as stated...post #63. Looks like the second floor corner windows in Alins's changed a bit over time.

View attachment 43804View attachment 43805
 
mikejee said:
Shirley
Regarding your comment about Dickens, the 1855 directory lists:
Winkle William, tailor , draper & hatter, 67 Constitutfon lHill​

Winkles William, Crown & Cushion, Higb st. Aston New town
mike
Click to expand...

Could this also be a contender mike? Williams, 'mad as a hatter' has a certain je ne sais quoi...although this is in Smallbrook Street...and my childhood nickname was Winkle...
 
mossg said:
Hi,i wonder if Mikejee can help me.In the picture shown on post#44 you can see a Mitchells & Butlers pub.
This pub would have been on Easy Row,is it The Woodman or was that further down Easy Row on the opposite side of the road?
Moss.
Click to expand...

I think this may be the one? The White Hart. Anyway it is a nice looking Building. There can't have been many pubs in this short Street. Interesting back catalogue...
 
Quote from McKenna " It began as little more than a rough track, leading from Town to Stourbridge(!). Paradise Street took its name from a field lying to the south of the pathway, called "Paradise Close'. At first the new street was called Paradise Row (1785) but had adopted its present name by 1792".
 
mossg said:
Hi,i wonder if Mikejee can help me.In the picture shown on post#44 you can see a Mitchells & Butlers pub.
This pub would have been on Easy Row,is it The Woodman or was that further down Easy Row on the opposite side of the road?


Moss.
Click to expand...

Moss. Please ignore my last nonsense about it being perhaps the White Hart (which is facing the wrong way forsooth!), I am now almost certain (as near certainty as you get with a Scientist) that it is the Crown in Broad Street. See Exhibit 'A' M'Lud... same Mitchells & Butlers signage, same windows, same Brewery Chimney at the rear of the Pub, and in the right direction... The Prosecution rests...
 
Dennis
I'm not sure if you are right . I seem to have missed the original request on the photo you mention, but on looking at it had assumed that it must be the Canal offices facing the end of Paradise St. This would make it the Woodman . although more recent photos don't show the brewers nameboard, the 1891 photo below does. I don't know about the chimney. This attribution would fit in with the 1889 map below, qith the canal office gateway in the correct position. Gowever , although there is a narrow onlet on the opposite side of Broad st to the Crown, there is no sign od a simialr gateway, or any canal offices. On the whole i would go with it being the woodman
Mike
 
May I atone for my crass gaffe, with this note from Viv Bird's tome that in 1769 Samuel Simcox, under the supervision of a not very well at the time James Brindley, completed a Canal in Brum some 22 miles long at a cost of only £70,000. You could buy shares in the construction for £140 a time evidentally, but only ten per person. One investor was Aidan's favourite poet John Freeth, who, as was his wont, marked the occasion by immediately breaking out into verse thus:

Then revel in gladness, let harmony flow.
From the district of Bordesley to Paradise Row;
For true feeling joy in each breast must be wrought.
When coals under fivepence per hundred are bought.

And Birmingham, for every curious art
Her sons invent, be Europe's greatest mart;
In every Kingdom, ever stand enroll'd,
The Great Mechanic Workhouse in the World.

The canal wharf in Birmingham ran almost up to Paradise Row and was not closed until 1926.

As a postscript, Freethy must have been well chuffed as the shares shot up to £400 each by 1782, when a Parliamentary Bill passed the Wednesbury to Birmingham link project, and the World went generally mad on canals. A rich Poet, now there's a paradox...
 
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More photos dug out for this so important Street (did I just type 'so' like that?). The one showing the Town Hall is worth your entrance money alone...You wait for a taxi for hours then six come all at once...courtesy of Sir Carl Chinn. I could stare at it all day. Bless him. What a geezer..
 
Dennis Williams said:
More photos dug out for this so important Street (did I just type 'so' like that?). The one showing the Town Hall is worth your entrance money alone...You wait for a taxi for hours then six come all at once...courtesy of Sir Carl Chinn. I could stare at it all day. Bless him. What a geezer..
Click to expand...

Dennis were they Hansom cabs outside the Town Hall???Dek
 
The lamppost is a corker too and non-cannon-shaped bollards. A veritable cornucopia of street-furniture
 
The cab shelters/stand are a great find on here. I wonder if any survived...maybe to become green houses in gardens or sheds.
 
hh.jpegIn 1858 Queen Victoria, accompanied by Prince Albert came to Birmingham, after the Queen had conferred a knighthood upon the Lord Mayor John Ratcliffe at The Town Hall, the Royal Procession left for Aston. Every inch of pavement was lined with sightseers along New Street, High Street, and Dale End and on to Aston.The Queen declared the park open whilst she was at Aston Hall.
 
ll.jpeg
Queens College in Paradise Street, I do not have a date for image but the college was completed in 1843.
 
Not much help, but i think it was between 1921 and 1935. I suspect that the building on direct left which can be partially seen (no 38) is occupied by Raleigh Cycle Co Ltd, who were not there in 1921 or 1936, but were there 1932-33 and for sometime before. Queens College chambers, which succeeded the building in the photograph, seem to have been built in the late20s-early 30s
mike
 
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