THX J
It is reasonable to assume there were many photographs taken at both churches.
Wedding photgraphs were routinely done outside!
(Now everything is still and electronically videotaped all over the place. Providing it is eminently high quality, as it jolly well aught be, then quite marvelous.)
Obviously you were later on: after the macabre nonsense of the WW II bombing and the miserable resignation of the CoE to resurrect such a great edifice.
(St Anne's RC church, close by, was blasted the altar off N end nave and promptly rebuilt. It is a typically cheap job, unimaginative, so boring. John Cardinal Newman, founder of the Oratorian Founders, starte dat that site, corner Bradford Street, in a chapel. Bekalite was discovered in an attic [IV floor] opposite corner BSt[!]. One would resonably suppose the RC Pope - there are two; one being G Ortho. - would have popped by in his red slippers to pay respect.)
I suspect there is a wealth of photo evidence, much disintegrating, of such sites.
Bro CC Chinn embarked on a bold and immensely belated venture of late as part and parcel of his sequester from UoB to S B
Coll. Digbeth for four years tenure: record memories by voice of as many people as possible. Most with that sort of memory scope are expired. The project should have eventuated in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Italianate influence is evident at both churches; viz.: Heath Mill Lane and Deritend High Street [aptly: St John's].
Mighty curious how come he chose those two close to locations. Maybe the land and price was right?
Digbeth and the swathe to Duddeston was popular with Italian settlers! Deritend, Bordesley, Camp Hill, Highgate, Cheapside was predominantly indiginate as olden time industrial denizens sans the immediate emmigrant profile.
Why Italians found that swathe neat 'n' nifty is mighty curious. Proximity to the Bull Ring, Vauxhall (enormous railway depot)
perhaps a magnet.
When, in 1837, the line was opened 'twixt Euston-Vauxhall:Birmingham, it was noted by a diarist that on transiting the viaduct from Bordesley "....one can view the dwellings of the industrious artisans."
(At least snobbery. The man is so rarified is so that he likely does not eat but rather osmotes vapours.)
The Irishry, curiously enough, favoured Sparkbrook and Sparkhill. There is now a migration to Digbeth.
The Irish Cultural Center, nee Club, was a municipal restaurant, opposite Birds Custard. There were several such peppered older industrial locales and it would be a salutary exercise to retrieve data on them. They were done away with in the 1960s by block head stupidity. They would have served as an invaluable resource for internship in culinary operatives.
(The Birmingham Academy of Culinary Arts and Crafts is a thriving affair, albeit diminutive, about Civic Centre.)
Today, they could serve an invaluable double role as relay sites for scientifical dietetic managed programs, home delivery points for meals delivered by wheels and foot, intelligent nutrition for the indisposed such as homeless and otherwise compromised of reduced means.
Quite enough to keep them busy and induct operatives to the rigours of the catering industry.
The original Irish Center was located alongside the ancient abbatoir opposite the fruit and vegetable and market.
Near Bradford Street; S below Bull Ring.
It comprised a couple former capacious shops with enough space to dance cheek to cheek and almost suffocate inhaling each others' stale breath, and with residential accomodation above street level. Naturally they jumped at a local relocation.
(Fantastically the facility was recently bailed out for one million pounds by the Irish parliament! [Incompetence with funds.]
That was, of course, prior to the demise of the Keltical Tiger. [Such stuff and nonsense.])
Splendid St Basil's operated the youth programmes. Gymnastics for all that growing energy being vital and of course outward bound projects. Surely there was a rousing marching brass band for street fare and concerts?
The architecture def. Italianate. Basilica St Basil's and innumerable churches Italy, St John's near.
The brickwork on the Deritend High Street piece leaves a lot to be desired. No in terms of lay, but the kind used.
Variety and all that. St Basil's a but more rosey. One suspects the fella had a soft spot for the location.
Because St John's the London (and Oxford) road(s) then the more massive edifice commanding.
Basilica more cosy parishional.
Interesting the congregation swell.
Surely there is a record of the attendees?
A list of churches is not even scratching the surface.
What happened to the church records?
They routinely are sacrosanct.
Certainly records of births, baptisms, confirmations (as applicable), deaths and anything else elligible for such recording would be held in perpetuity when a facility was decomishioned (as both cases).
As weddings were done, then almost certainly baptisms.
Where were people buried?
There's a small graveyard of yore at Camp Hill about Holy Trinity. Prior to the erection of that imposing edifice and as a massive fiscal investment, it was a gathering ground for contemplation. There's a sealed cave there in which a hermit seer
resided (overlooking Watery Lane: presumably a stream stretch).
So many churches one might wonder of the territory held some sort of praeternatural significance.
Actually, it is likely because the epicentre of Birmingham.
The manor house and all that.
The Rea was apparently of negligible significance in the formation of the Modern Era, as Industrial Revolution.
However, given that passenger excursions were done into the pre culvert job, whereby revelers would be transported from where to Vauxhall Gardens for gay repast and frollicks for those so inclined, it was surely navigable for freight.
The reach being of query.
The extent of stupidity as such as obtuseness to incredulity, and venality whisked, is of course anaesthetic.
The headquarters of Prince Rupert at Camp Hill was demolished for nothing.
Another blot as a monument to inanity.
Much earlier on, my researches and that of friends, colleagues, comrades that locale and others specifical revealed a great deal.
We being of slender means and engaged as broadly diversified with other pursuits simply did not have funding to document visually and written words the immense breadth and depth of material discovered at exponential rate.
Of course a million miles of public streets (all kinds) c. 1964, all of which were gas illumined and subsequently electrified is
a sheer wonder when one considers installation of hardware. Then upkeep.
We also investigated sewers, which necessitated recruiting the good offices of that department and maps and other documentation.
Birmingham was progressive, as a result of such as prdominantly Chamberlain, et al, in that respect.
Many miles are abandoned. Also discovered contemporaneously that brief delve, was coal mining reaches beneath Birmingham. That find was somewhat geologically an query because Birmingham is predominantly shifting (red) sandstone.
[plateau]
(There's a cute ledge on the road by Evesham at the edge of the plateau, so that if you are belting south on a peddle bicycle you could easily go head over heels forward down. It is near a gorgeous beauty spot favoured by love sick swains known as Dingly Dell. [An utterly daft term like, "Bendy Buses" - ie eg:articulated/concertina; 'Wheelie Bins" - ie eg: Wheel Bin])
The 'infrastructure' of water-sanitation, gas, electricity is a scale which is awsome. Same all big cities (Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, etc.). In terms of labour, equipment, raw materials, engineering. Many back toback house yards did not have flush lavatories, though since the wash houses had provision of running water then presumably the lavatories drained into the same line.
Most all back to back houses I/we examined had a faucet and sink, under the stairs and many with steps to the coal room
beneath; coal being unloaded down from the street.
(Maybe they were the more posh versions of the dwellings of the Industrious Artisans?]
If you were within the parish, albeit as visitor, of St Basil's & St John's you might recall the first masonnettes in Birmingham were built near by Floodgate St., and the first 'high rise' block of flats (12 storey) just off Great Barr Street-Watery-Garrison Lane. (Apparently the latter being used as a sheltered for women victims of domestic violence.)
It is pertinent to bare in mind that these civic endeavours were pioneering.
The condition in which I/we found the masonnetes (demolished by idiocy) and high rise item was, one the whole, reasonable.
Given a good century of rough and tumble wear and tear.
