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Stephenson Street

A sketch of the Midland Hotel opposite New Street Station. Stephenson Street looks like a wide road on the sketch, unlike the narrower back street it later became. And there's still evidence of the Midland hotel above ground level, the hotel is now the Burlington. Viv.

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As it is now with the Midland Metro works






4 years ago



3 years ago before anything started



2 years ago

 
Thanks for the photos Ell, your second one especially shows how narrow Stephenson Street is now. It must once have been much wider as all the old photos I've seen show a bigger piece of land in front of the station. I expect the 1960s station was built further out onto the street. Viv.
 
If you have any photos of the old station before demolition in the mid 1960s, post it here!

No problem.

Maybe it's always been like that?
 
A couple of photos of Stephenson Street and the Queens Hotel, you are right Vivienne Stephenson St certainly looked wider back then. Obviously in the 60's when they rebuilt the encroached into the street a little.
 

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Maybe as the current building over hangs the pavement (both with concrete and late shiny panels on top of it).


All the shops that were here have been swept away by the current redevelopment.
 
Yes Ell I remember an overhang - that's where the Gilded Cage pub was and I think an Army recruitment office in the 1970s. In fact there was a bomb planted nearby underneath the ramp up to the car park. It was exploded by a robot! Viv.
 
I think the building line is now the outer edge of the paved are of the Queens Hotel access area, and it was the Ikon Gallery that was damaged in the 1974 bomb blast. The Royal navy & Royal Marines recruiting office was next door.
 

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This was in 2011



Where the Newt was, is now the access to the Moor Street link bridge.


It went from being like this



to this




The last photo is a bit further on.


Been down there today, but don't recall seeing William Hill still down there.
 
I think the building line is now the outer edge of the paved are of the Queens Hotel access area, and it was the Ikon Gallery that was damaged in the 1974 bomb blast. The Royal navy & Royal Marines recruiting office was next door.

The bomb was eventually defused by the Royal Army Ordinance Corps of Hereford. It was a duffle bag bomb. Here's a photo of it near the ramp. Viv.

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Streetview still has the pre-development view of Stephenson Street and I think it's possible that the edge of the shops underneath the overhang are probably in the same position of the old Queen's Hotel frontage. If you look here

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To me it looks like the overhang (of what was the Palisades) might be the only part of the building exceeding the original footprint of Queen's Hotel, while the shops at street level remain within the Queen's Hotel footprint.

Viv.
 
To me it looks like the overhang (of what was the Palisades) might be the only part of the building exceeding the original footprint of Queen's Hotel, while the shops at street level remain within the Queen's Hotel footprint.

Viv.


Vivienne

What you say is possibly quite true, here are before and after maps for comparison. though it was more than an overhang wasn't it? It was more or less part of the building without a frontage,
 

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phil thanks for those pics of the queens hotel...yet another magnificent building lost..

here is another map..

lyn
 

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Thanks Phil and Lyn. Looking at your maps I think what might have happened is the current shop frontage at ground level was built over and up to the wall/gates which were once in front of the Queen's Hotel. This is a "Queens and North Western Hotel" image showing the wall behind which was a private road giving access to the hotel. I think the wall/gates must have at some time been removed (well before the hotel was demolished) because later pictures show a much wider road without the wall. On one of the maps the road seems to have had a cab stand. Maybe the wall was removed because of an increasing need for cabs to have closer access to the hotel and to lever up room on Stephenson Street for other traffic.Viv.

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Blimey business must have been very brisk. A substantial additional floor was added to the hotel plus a couple of towers with cupolas on top! (Sorry no dates). But looks like a lot of additional rooms to me. Or maybe the station took over more of the street level accommodation and the hotel moved upwards? Viv.

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The overlays show how much extra ground space was taken

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Thanks Mike, I knew you'd be able to help! So the modern day canopy/overhang extends out as far as the old gated wall of the Queen's Hotel and the shops underneath would have been built over some of the earlier private road which ran in front of the Hotel. If the railway owned that private road I expect they could do what they liked with it in the 60s development. Viv.
 
This might help to illustrate how much of the road was built over. Admittedly the angle is slightly different, but if you look at the red brick building immediately ahead in the modern view, you can see clearly that the structure is now much further across the road. On the older photo, the private road is still there divided by a little island - which is where the gated wall once was. So pretty much all of that would have disappeared when the site was re-developed in the 1960s. Viv.

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viv that street gets narrower and narrower...although because of the overhang we cant see all of the left corner building but it looks the same one as the one in your then photo...

lyn
 
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