Alliance Assurance Company

[Stargazey]

The first job I had after leaving school in 1963 was as a shorthand typist at the Alliance Assurance Company, which occupied a building on the corner of Waterloo Street and Colmore Row. Architecturally it is a very impressive building, with a clock tower that faces onto Victoria Square. And it is still there. Some time ago, when it’s tenants were the Birmingham Tourist Office, I went in to find that the magnificent Banking Hall was still intact, including the beautiful wooden reception counter behind which my elder sister sat for many years, in pride of place as the Managing Director’s Secretary. More recently, when I visited Birmingham, I found the building repurposed as a restaurant and, as there were no customers at the time, the staff allowed me to visit the room under the clock, part of which was Typing Pool, where I worked for a number of years. Now the office partitions have been removed, the full extent of the hexagonal room is revealed, and the panorama of Victoria Square, the Town Hall, and the Art Gallery is in full view. To have landed a job as a teenager in a such an elegant building, and to have worked in a room with such a wonderful view, might have passed me by when I was there in the 60’s. But the fact I was able to revisit this building over half a century later and appreciate it, even in its new guise, was quite an honour. Stargazey