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The Boar House: Bull Street

S

shoarthing

proper brummie kid
Hi - I'm an historian researching some real-estate on & behind Bull Street (Cherry Orchard side) belonging to an early Birmingham entrepreneur - an immensely successful saw-maker of H1 C18th named: William Smith . . .

. . . . it's a Birmingham success-story (bless!) so as we all know the hero's long-forgotten, & the site's been built & brutally rebuilt; but I believe one of William Smith's houses was called: "Boar house" . . . I also suspect it is likely to have been #103 in that lovely Suffield-supplied 1840 street-view - which as all you Birmingham-experts know, appears to have a plaque of a boar upon the wall above #103's street-entrance.

Do any of the experts here - either the well-read - or well-imaged (I have a really weak knowledge of C18th/19th drawings/paintings of Bull Street) - have anything to add to our knowledge about "Boar house"? Who it was built for or by? Other images? Some recollections from reading in the archives? Local histories?

The street-numbering didn't change a great deal, I believe.
 

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I do not have any knowledge of the Boar House, but would point out that Maguire & Higgins, woolen drapers, (see below) were at 103 and this is described as "at the sign of the Golden Fleece", so the plaque might be a sheep rather than a boar.

Birm J. 3.12.1842.jpgBirm. J. 1..7.1837.jpg
 
. . . thank you (both) . . . that's spared me an embarrassing beast-confusion.

The text (attached) is pretty clear - but can refer to any one of 4 or 5 adjacent & neighbouring buildings. Am booking a day in Birmingham's superb Archives to seek further clues:
 

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shoarthing said:
. . . thank you (both) . . . that's spared me an embarrassing beast-confusion.

The text (attached) is pretty clear - but can refer to any one of 4 or 5 adjacent & neighbouring buildings. Am booking a day in Birmingham's superb Archives to seek further clues:
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I guess this is William Smith's will, do you have an approximate date? The Boar House means nothing to me, but many old pubs and inns had animal signs so that they might be recognised. Good luck in the Archives.
 
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looking at the will post 4 it does say the boar house..on the line above it seems to say it could be near bull st so maybe not actually in bull st...just a thought

lyn
 
'an immensely successful saw-maker of H1 C18th named: William Smith . . .' Forgive me, is H1 a typo and could you mean nineteenth century? (C18 means 1701 - 1800). William Smith is a hard name to trace, so being sure of his dates could help you find Boar House.
 
Stokkie said:
'an immensely successful saw-maker of H1 C18th named: William Smith . . .' Forgive me, is H1 a typo and could you mean nineteenth century? (C18 means 1701 - 1800). William Smith is a hard name to trace, so being sure of his dates could help you find Boar House.
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Yes, 'William Smith' has been a challenge to trace through archive index'; he died in the early 1740s, so his active career - <1714-1740> - belongs firmly to the first half of the C18th.
 
Just wondering if William Smith's house once had sight of the cathedral (built 1715) - there is a recently re-gilded boar's head on top of the weather vane.
 
Lady Penelope said:
Just wondering if William Smith's house once had sight of the cathedral (built 1715) - there is a recently re-gilded boar's head on top of the weather vane.
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. . . . fun insight! William Smith was buried at the new church - tho' many of his kin remained faithful to St Martins: there are records of family ownership of St. Martins "kneelings", pews, seats adjacent the parson, & suchlike privatisations of faith.
 
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shoarthing said:
Yes, 'William Smith' has been a challenge to trace through archive index'; he died in the early 1740s, so his active career - <1714-1740> - belongs firmly to the first half of the C18th.
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Thank you! That might help find The Boar House. And sorry for questioning C18. Any ideas if this house was a dwelling house or his manufactory? Could he have marked his saws with a boar's head? I can't find anything on line about his saws, but this is very early.
 
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. . . . however, the focus of my research is saw-making in Birmingham (& its surrounding towns), between roughly 1715 - 1765 . . . the saw-making industry becomes increasingly (then more-or-less entirely) based in & around Sheffield from around 1775 onwards. Sadly, the earliest extant Birmingham Trade Directory, of 1767, was published just as that trade declined.
 
Stokkie said:
Thank you! That might help find The Boar House. And sorry for questioning C18. Any ideas if this house was a dwelling house or his manufactory? Could he have marked his saws with a boar's head? I can't find anything on line about his saws, but this is very early.
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. . . the Smith saw-making business appears to have been a street-frontage of plural & adjacent houses; plus some workshops, plus two relatively substantial buildings: a Plating Shop & a Hardening Shop; set adjacent a yard (with a cart-width entrance to Bull Street) containing or adjacent a draw-well; with gardens behind. The saw-plates were marked: SMITH or (unusually) WILLIAM SMITH. Survivors are - naturally, being tools & ferrous - extremely uncommon.
 
shoarthing said:
. . . the Smith saw-making business appears to have been a street-frontage of plural & adjacent houses; plus some workshops, plus two relatively substantial buildings: a Plating Shop & a Hardening Shop; set adjacent a yard (with a cart-width entrance to Bull Street) containing or adjacent a draw-well; with gardens behind. The saw-plates were marked: SMITH or (unusually) WILLIAM SMITH. Survivors are - naturally, being tools & ferrous - extremely uncommon.
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Thank you and good luck with your book.
 
shoarthing said:
. . . the Smith saw-making business appears to have been a street-frontage of plural & adjacent houses; plus some workshops, plus two relatively substantial buildings: a Plating Shop & a Hardening Shop; set adjacent a yard (with a cart-width entrance to Bull Street) containing or adjacent a draw-well; with gardens behind. The saw-plates were marked: SMITH or (unusually) WILLIAM SMITH. Survivors are - naturally, being tools & ferrous - extremely uncommon.
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This from 1777 book mentions a Bear yard at the end of Bull St

coach yard 2.jpg
 
mikejee - Hi - nice to see this area clearly, on the charming 1731 survey. Mapping with an explicit mention of Bear Yard (whether or not that is directly relevant to my research, it is of interest here) is apparently in James Drake's 1825 "Picture of Birmingham" (first ed.) & shown - in an exasperating form that is not, as I type, functioning on this tablet - in Birmingham Library's image-viewer . . . . the Library's explanatory text goes: A small passageway connecting Crooked Lane and Bull Street, not seen on any previous map since Westley’s map of 1731, is labelled Bear Yard.
 
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RobT said:
This from 1777 book mentions a Bear yard at the end of Bull St

View attachment 178630
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RobT - thank you; the sequences, if not the numbering, in Pearson & Rollason are useful . . . the trouble with this Welch Cross/bottom-end of Bull Street, where it meets High Street, is that it's stiff with yards & pubs, thus easy to get lost or (pubs!) side-tracked . . . coming uphill to Bull Street:
 

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. . . Hubbard is presumably "The Seven Stars" & Sarah Harris: "The Lion & Lamb" . . . & that takes us into the complexities of Lamb Yard . . .
 
pjmburns said:
Could the word in the will be Bear not Boar? That writing is very hard to decipher. E's tend to look like o's with a squiggle on top. o_O
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I don't believe so - that entire document appears to consistently & deliberately use lower-case epsilon ε for lower-case e - so, no, Boar ain't Bear (unless my old eyes - well, eye - has finally gone mataglap).

Correction: on re-checking, one of this Will's witnesses is 'Richard Robinson' - presumably the same Richard Robinson known later to be landlord of: "The Bear & Ragged Staff" in Bull Street . . . . so, ¡yes! . . . it seems Boar was Bear, after all. How exasperating - I posted here & bothered you all entirely due to the apparently consistent use of ε . . . .

Thanks to all those who have contributed to this thread.
 
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In this 1889 map surveyed in 1887 there is a Board PH, in the middle of Temple Row?,
at that time the Lamp was at 73 Bull Street, but although marked Board PH it is not listed with the Pubs & Inns.

board PH.jpg
 
RobT said:
In this 1889 map surveyed in 1887 there is a Board PH, in the middle of Temple Row?,
at that time the Lamp was at 73 Bull Street, but although marked Board PH it is not listed with the Pubs & Inns.

View attachment 178639
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? . . . .

. . . . incredibly, it seems, according to Kelly's, the name "Board" was in greater use as a pub-name than "Boar's" in 1888 . . . .
 

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There was a pub named Ye Olde Nelson on the site of the 'Broad PH' that was bombed during WW2 in 1942. Is it simply just the case that this was the same public house building but it had a name change sometime after 1887?
 
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