St Martin's Circus & Manzoni Gardens

[Vivienne14]

This 1970s postcard is labelled 'St Martin's Circus' Personally I'd never heard of St Martin's Circus. If I had I'd have imagined it to be nearer St Martin's churchyard. The only name I've ever heard given to this area is Manzoni Gardens. So was St Martin's Circus the road around Manzoni Gardens? Viv.

 

[Phil]

Viv

Basically what you say is correct, here is part of a map showing the original layout of the roads in the city centre. I'm sorry it's not very good but it's part of a larger map. Perhaps someone might have a better one.

 

[Vivienne14]

Thanks Phil. So the gardens seem to have been laid out within the Circus. Were there no other buildings within the Circus ? Birmingham seems to have liked this sort of arrangement in the 1960s ie open recreation space surround by a major road/ring road. Similar arrangements of open spaces/places to rest were the sunken area below Priory Ringway/Queensway (now filled in) and the sunken space in front of the Gaumont Cinema and Wesleyan Insurance (also now filled in). Viv.

 

[Phil]

Viv

Looking at these two photo you will see that a major part of the top of the Bull Ring was contained within St Martins Circus. Manzoni Gardens were almost the last part of the Bull Ring to be laid out as the Market Hall that stood there previously was the last one of the old buildings to go as it was used as a compound for the builders while construction was taking place.

 

[Vivienne14]

Thanks Phil. Assuming I've understood correctly, it had never occurred to me that the Gardens were the footprint of the Market Hall! Seems to me the layout of the area can only be fully appreciated in an aeriel view. The 'Circus' is much larger than I imagined too. Viv.

 

[ellbrown]

When the old Bull Ring was knocked down in 2000, the realigned road was renamed St Martin's Queensway (it goes outside the new New Street Station towards the Bullring link bridge)


This view is now lost since new shops were installed in what is now called Bullring Link Street.

 

[Phil]

Viv

The reason you may not have heard of St Martins Circus could be because when the Queen visited Birmingham to open the Queensway Tunnel in 1971 she mistakenly named the whole inner city ringway the Queensway instead of just the tunnel, and everybody was too scared to tell her she had made a mistake.

The whole story is recounted here,
https://www.birminghampost.co.uk/news/local-news/queen-mistakenly-named-entire-birmigham-5435239. Though this is the pertinent part

"It meant a long list of ‘Queensway’ rather than ‘Ringway’ locations came to make up the inner ring road, including St Chad’s, Lancaster Street, Paradise Circus, Great Charles, Suffolk Street, Holloway Circus, Smallbrook, St Martin’s, Moor Street, James Watt and Masshouse Circus."

I had read this story before, but it took me some time to track it down again

 

[Vivienne14]

Well, well, well ! Thats one big mistake Ma'am ! And a good story too. In the 70s/80s I never knew whether these places were Queensways or Ringways, the titles seemed interchangeable. So that's maybe the reason why. Viv.

 

[rosie]

Thanks Phil, the story is true then! I heard it years ago but I was never sure.
rosie.

 

[DavidGrain]

The roundabouts which formed parts of Queensway/Ringway where still know by their "circus" names just to identify the junctions. I think why St Martins did not register was because most people disappeared underground before they got there. Even the previous open air market was within St Martins Circus

 

[Phil]

I remember Manzoni Gardens when it first opened, if you so much as placed a foot on the grass or sat on a wall the green uniformed security men would be there in seconds and move you on. It was ridiculous a green haven within the centre of the Bull Ring and the only place you could sit on a nice day to enjoy the sunshine was on one of the benches which soon filled up when the sun came out.

Though after a couple of years of moving people on the security suddenly relaxed and the grassed areas became a haven for sunbathers. After a while they even removed some of the shrubbery and concrete and for some reason the water feature and added more grassed areas. I spent many an afternoon lying there chatting to various young ladies having their dinner breaks.

 

[DavidGrain]

What I objected to in the Manzoni Gardens was the statue of King Kong. I regarded it as an insult to Sir Herbert Manzoni, a man I had met.

 

[Vivienne14]

I think the main thing going for the gardens is it was a little oasis surrounded by concrete. Everywhere needs green spaces and Manzoni put something back into what was fast becoming a concrete jungle in the 1960s. Viv.

 

[Vivienne14]

Think this is a good illustration of how the Circus enveloped the old Market Hall, before the Manzoni's Gardens were laid out. Viv.

 

[Phil]

What I objected to in the Manzoni Gardens was the statue of King Kong. I regarded it as an insult to Sir Herbert Manzoni, a man I had met.

David

I can't ever claim to have met the man, but I saw enough of his work, sorry but I think he can never be forgiven for the fact he thought that everything had to go in his vision of encompassing the city centre in a concrete system of ring roads. Surely he could have been more sympathetic to some of Birmingham's great old architecture. It's no secret that he would have liked to go much further than he did do.

 

[DavidGrain]

Phil, I won't argue with you because I think we all regret things about the City Centre. Manzoni's plan was to get traffic out of the City Centre altogether which never happened. Thankfully his plan for another "spoke" in the wheel, like the Priory, taking in Colmore Row and Steelhouse Lane never happened. However without his plans we would all be trying to drive across the city using New Street, Corporation Street, High Street etc.

 

[Lulurhynd]

Hi there, sorry to bring up a past discussion.
But I was just wondering if anyone could tell me where the Manzoni Gardens were? I'm a young history buff and I think the gardens were gone before my time!
I'm taking a guess it's opposite where Moor Street currently is, sort of where St Martins church is?

Thanks for any help!
Lucy

 

[Phil]

Hi Lucy

Welcome to you, you must be very young if you don't remember Manzoni Gardens (or am I just very old). They have changed the Bull-Ring (never Bullring) so very much it is hard to explain now just where this bit of greenery in the middle of Birmingham was.

This doorway to the new Bull-Ring centre is opposite the main entrance to what they now call Grand Central, if you walk through this doorway for about 10 or 2o metres (yards to me) then you would have been standing in Manzoni Gardens which was built on the footprint of the old Market Hall in the early 60's.

 

[ellbrown]

It was still there until around 1999 or 2000 (when it was demolished).

If you head into Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery - then up to the Birmingham History Galleries, at the far end is this picture of the old Bull Ring.



The buses used to go around it on St Martin's Circus Queensway.

The bus used to stop right outside St Martin's Church.

 

[Phil]

I'm sure that Lucy can find any picture of the Bull Ring or Manzoni Gardens she might require just here. I must have posted a few hundred of the city centre myself over the years. If she just types in what she wants in the search box at the top right of the page I'm pretty sure she will get loads of returns. If not, if she puts out an appeal for what she wants I can guarantee she will get all the hep she wants.

 

[DavidGrain]

Lucy, This is a 1961 photo from the DJ Norton Archive on the internet. St Martins Circus was a large roundabout part of Queensway which encompassed the open air market, Manzoni Gardens and some of the shops in the Bull Ring. If you look at this picture then think today and imagine you are standing in Debenham's store looking at New Street Station, you would be more or less over Manzoni Gardens.

Sorry I should have said the Geoff Thompson Archive. The webpage was slightly confusing.

 

[Vivienne14]

Were the gardens well used? I think I rarely went there. Viv.

 

[ellbrown]

Many images come up on Google Image search.

https://www.photobydjnorton.com/NewBham/NewBham16.html

 

[DavidGrain]

A lot of people loved the King Kong statue and some have campaigned to bring it back. Personally I hated it and thought it was an insult to Sir Herbert Manzoni whom I had met.

 

[Vivienne14]

That certainly helps to place the gardens Ell. Thanks. Viv.

 

[ellbrown]

The D J Norton site certainly has a lot of nice interesting photos from the 1950s and 1960s.

 

[Phil]

Lucy

A couple of photos of the old Market Hall which as I said earlier was replaced with Manzoni Gardens. The first photo is early in the demolition process when most of the buildings around it had been demolished but it was still in use. The second photo is from 1963 when the Bull Ring Centre was open and the Rotunda was going up and the market hall was being used as a builders compound. It wasn't long after this that they demolished the shell of the marker hall and laid out Manzoni Gardens.

 

[sospiri]

Phil,

I and quite a few others on here never knew Manzoni Gardens simply because we had been absent from the city since the early 1960s - in my case January 1961 - and didn't have cause to go that way until after they were demolished. My first visit to central Birmingham after 1961 was in 1988 to Aston Uni, at that time our only academic library customer before the decision was taken to ditch the academic libraries from our otherwise public library base.

In my humble opinion Manzoni made a mess of the Bull Ring and it is still a mess now - I think over-development is the phrase I am looking for.

Maurice

 

[Old Boy]

Were the gardens well used? I think I rarely went there. Viv.

Hi Viv,
The gardens were well used as a route from the Bull Ring to the main part of town, New Street, Corporation Street etc. It was a pleasant place to sit and rest if your shopping had tired you out. At night it became a haven for vagrants.

Old Boy

 

[Lulurhynd]

Hi Phil,

Thank you for your help! Yes, I have a rough idea of where abouts it is now. I must have been around 2-3 years old when it was demolished then. I've enjoyed having a look at all the photos of the old Bull-Ring, as it's interesting to see how different it is compared to what it use to be.

It's a shame it was demolished as it looks like a beautiful place.
Very interested in finding out more about our city and how far it has developed over the years.

Thanks all.

Lucy