Search results

New stuff added to post 125

You can add National Archive's RAIL 44/34 to your list for the Birmingham, Dudley and Wolverhampton Railway Number 1 contract which I think covered the section from Great Charles Street to Vyse Street. There is reference to this section in Adrian Vaughn's "The Intemperate Engineer" in letters...

Thank you Mike, this has jogged the old grey matter this morning. Both Pigott Smith's 1825 and the SDUK 1839 maps correctly show Vauxhall Gardens as being west of the Grand Junction railway. Seeing Pigott Smith's later survey showing them east of the railway was the surprise though I can now...

Dear Rupert, I had always assumed that Vauxhall Gardens were associated with Duddeston Park and the Manor but this turned up on Friday whilst scouring through some of the new Library's archives which throws a new light on things. This from John Pigott Smith's 1851 survey of which sadly only a...

Correct, their most famous contribution to Brum being the construction of the Digbeth Viaduct from Bordesley Junction to Moor Street. This clip from “An Account of the Works on the Birmingham Extension of the Birmingham and Oxford Junction Railway” by CHRISTOPHER BAGOT LANE Assoc. Inst. C.E...

"Re: Passages, Alleyways Gulletts and Snickets of Old Brum A million years ago on here, I think Phil featured a little know Bradford Passageway that ran from Corporation Street to Temple Row...now swallowed up by Rackhams...and we didn't have a deent photo of same...but I found this today...not...

Thank you Paul, I have to admit to a large gap in my knowledge on Queen Anne who apparently reigned between 1702-1714 but gave her name to a period of architectural style during the last quarter of the 19C. Ravenhurst it appears from a brief web trawl was a house built by Richard Smallbroke...

Dear Rupert, I am pleased you enjoyed it and have survived the ice storm. Cats are surprisingly useful! Crisp and sunny here in Upper Harborne by contrast.

Since my last missive, I have scanned, scaled and calibrated most of the available maps which depict the area where it is likely Cooper’s Farm and Mills were located. None of the earlier plans of Birmingham, Westley’s 1731, Bradford’s 1750 or Hanson’s 1778, cover the area eastwards beyond where...

Whilst trying to put a date, and possible even a builder, on Cooper's Farm house as depicted in Nathaniel Buck's Prospect with its Dutch/Flemish gabled ends the following turned up in the Warwickshire Photographic Survey at the Library of Birmingham. They are of long since gone Ravenhurst Manor...

Electric Avenue, an aspect of my life which I thought I had forgotten…. I must have been persuaded to sign up to a five year apprenticeship at a school careers do in the early summer of 1960 because I could draw, liked mending things, could do electricity and was likely to attain the minimum...

Or maybe his son Samuel who surveyed Brum in 1750, well before Corporation Street however, but his map did show a passage beginning in Temple Alley (Row), roughly where Rackhmam's Goods entrance is today which shared the same alignment and location.

Because of Henry Bradford perhaps?

Dear Rupert, Thought you would like to see my latest "discovery". Whilst waiting for the archivists at the new Library of Birmingham find where Pigott Smith's maps have been stored (or lost) this turned up which puts the timeframe of William Cooper et al into some sort of context. John...

Hopefully in the coming weeks I will get to see the four original ink and wash on linen maps that Pigott Smith created so at least I can photograph the details shown along the course of the Rea as well as the "parterre" garden at the junction of Liverpool Street and Heath Mill Lane and the...

Dear Rupert, A little something for you to get your teeth into. A couple of months ago I came across the following, in https://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/teacher/history/jm_jones/aston_manors/bordesley/page10.htm. "A Bordesley watermill was recorded in the C14th and in...

Dear Mike, I agree, bells and whistles amongst other things See: https://whistlemuseum.com/2008/11/24/wdowler--sons-escargot-button-whistle-c1860--70s-beside-a-dowler-american-civil-war-button.aspx Re: Michael Ball's need for maps etc. is a long shot in that Rail 45/9 at The National Archive...

This be Dowler's whistles factory I assume

It is perhaps worth mentioning that natural light was in abundance when New Street station was first constructed and when we had our own example of a great train shed care of Edward Cowper, of which, St Pancras' architect George Gilbert Scott said: “An iron roof in its most normal condition is...

Firstly my post 25 in this thread has been amended slightly. Reference was made to the bridge shown in the foreground of Sulman's Panorama which was demolished at some point in the early 20's or even before perhaps as early as 1883. These are from Roger De Boer's "Birmingham's Electric...