A huge puzzle to me...hoping someone can help? This is an extract from a piece I'm preparing of the history of the Eye Hospitals in Brum....."
Joseph Hodgson, a British eye surgeon, started his campaign to open an eye hospital in Birmingham in October 1823. Six months later, in April 1824, The Infirmary for the Cure of Diseases of the Eye was opened at Cannon Street, Birmingham.
In 1853 after 30 years at Cannon Street, the increase in work at the infirmary meant a larger hospital was needed. To accommodate for this need, a house was bought in Steelhouse Lane and converted into a 15-bed hospital known as the Birmingham and Midland Eye Institution.
By 1861 the Steelhouse Lane property also became too small to accommodate the increasing number of patients the hospital was treating. The Steelhouse Lane property was offered to the Birmingham and Midland Free Hospital for Sick Children and the Birmingham and Midland Eye Institution moved out to a property in Temple Row in 1862, which provided room for 50-beds.
On the move to Temple Row the Institution changed its name again to the Birmingham and Midland Eye Hospital.
The new Temple Row property carried a public house licence; the hospital governors renovated the public house, letting it out to a tenant. The hospital continued to own this inn for the next 20 years.
Meetings were held in February 1880 as the hospital continued to grow to discuss remodeling the hospital on Temple Row to accommodate more patients. Architects involved in the plans for the remodel thought that in order to build a hospital large enough to accommodate its growth in patient numbers the building would have to be too tall to comply to the existing rights of light in place at the time.
By December 1881 these concerns had been resolved and the design for the building was agreed. The new building would include a waiting room to accommodate 200 people, two main wards, two contagious wards, an operating theatre, nurse’s rooms and a library.
So....the Temple Row building seems to have been a pub/eye infirmary?!! Never ever heard of this before.....any ideas where this might have been? Is it on any old maps mike?