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Roundabout fair ride Bull Ring

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ELIZABETH1

master brummie
Just read Angie's question about the monkey - I don't remember that at all - but I can remember a roundabout type fairground ride in the Bullring - it had cars, buses, horses etc
- sort of looked down onto the outdoor markets area - sort of near where Selfridges is now!! there used to be benches to sit on and a few little shops along there if I remember correctly.
Wasn't there a Tesco's there at some point - it changed to Argos later on?? (now she is really rambling?)

Just thought I'd ask incase it's getting late here and I am dreaming things ha ha (like Angie ha ha)
 
Yes Elizabeth i remember,people used to feed the birds there too,just under the underpass were the loo's :angel:
 
Angie,
I loved that roundabout - if I was very good and behaved all the way around the shops I was allowed to go on the roundabout at weekends - I loved it - I can remember the birds too as I used to geed them - my mum used to sit on the benches for a break while I waved going round & round !!
 
Our kids used to go to the roundabout with their Gt aunt and Uncle. They christened it the Iso, they would come back and tell us they had been round the Johnny Horner and down  the Apples and Pears to get there. :)
 
right alongside the roundabout was Nelsons statue both on an arm of the bull ring on abridge that led to nowhere and unless you wanted the carousel nobody went that way. This is why people thought that Nelson only came back after the latest remodelling when in fact he was always there
 
Thank you so much for that!! :smitten:

I used to love that roundabout when I was a child - I shall put that in my scrapbook for my mum as she had to sit there for hours watching that go round and round when we were little ha ha It will bring back so ,amy memories for het too!! :smitten:
 
elizabeth1 said:
but I can remember a roundabout type fairground ride in the Bullring - it had cars, buses, horses etc
Click to expand...
yes, remember it well...just along from the shop you could get hot doughnuts...
us 3 kids used to love it in the 60's when mom or dad, or both used to take us up there...

dad used to take us up the Bullring on Sunday afternoons (to give mom a rest) maybe when my little sister (born in '64) was a baby.
Can't remember if the roundabout was open then (it may have been early evening).

The city centre was so quiet and peaceful to walk round in those days on a Sunday...it is SUCH a shame that is no more :(

EDIT: Oh Di!! I just scrolled up and saw the picture...I found it quite moving...hahaha a roundabout is moving...
you know what I mean...
I think I hate change!

elizabeth1 said:
my mum used to sit on the benches for a break while I waved going round & round !!
Click to expand...
my mom did too :)
 
View attachment 10598
View attachment 10599
Had trouble doing these but got there in the end.
I think the old market hall stood about where the road passes under the Bull Ring Centre and the old road down to Woolworth's and Saint Martins is where you can see the market stalls.
Talking about the top Photograph compared with the lower Photograph.
Anyone Have a Modern day Photograph to compare with these two ? Please Post.
For anyone not familiar, the old market hall on the lower photograph is the building with the two columns half way up the hill. ( Lost its roof to bombing in WW2. )
 
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Gosta Green

Looking at the old picture of the Bull Ring makes me realise how much we have lost through modernisation, the old Bull Ring was so full of character, the buildings and people, we have had many postings on this subject before, but in my opinion the "new" 1960's and the current Bull Ring can't hold a candle to the old.
 
I do agree with you Sylvia, I am glad the 60's buildings are no more, but the old Bull Ring was wonderful as Ernie's picture shows. In fact it's the best picture of that part of Brum that I have seen,
 
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The Old Rag Market.

Sylvia, I agree with you entirely, I can remember the old rag market right at the very bottom of the hill on the left hand side. I can never remember anything new ever being sold there, seemed to be pin stripped suits and waistcoats,shoes of all descriptions,underwear of all descriptions as well,
Coms ( Combinations ) wonder if anyone remembers them? Last seen in the old wild west films. There was probably also household goods sold as well. Jamaica Row I cannot remember but seem to think it was small shops meat or fish, could be wrong and hope someone will correct me if I am.
I do hope that someone can add to this thread of any Memories they have.
 
A source of Firewood.

I cannot remember the name of the street with the tram is turning out of but it was the quickest route to get to the Bull Ring from where I lived when I went to collect the wooden orange boxes for firewood, when they started the slum clearance I did'nt need the orange boxes any more we had tons of old wood
 
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GER22VAN
Super photos, best one of the Bullring That I have seen. I wonder if the year would be 1931. That seems to be printed on it. Would the building at the top be the back of King Edwards. I seem to have read somewhere that the market roof was destroyed in a fire not by bombs. My memory goes back to when the shops on the corner of Moor Street where not there I think. Maybe that was due to bombing.
 
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Bull Ring

Rupert. It is obviously a postcard and one that I borrowed from this site.
I had always understood that the Market Hall had lost its roof due to air raids.
I could not put a date to the Photograph I am sorry to say.
I tell you what does intrigue me is that although it appears to be market day there are no barrow boys alongside the pavement, so I can only assume that the barrow boys appeared later than the photograph as the market began to expand.
I cannot tell you anything about King Edwards. I can remember shops at the Bull Ring end of Moor Street but not at the other end from Dale End.
 
Bull Ring

Ernie

The Market Hall roof was indeed destroyed in a German air raid in 1941 by an incendiary bomb, See my picture of the Bull Ring very similar to yours, but its got a few barrows.

Rupert

King Edwards School was still in use until 1941, as the Bull Ring photo is obviously prior to that, it is possible that is what you see in the photo. I also think that it was possible that the Public House that stood on the corner of Moor St may have suffered bomb damage also. I am not sure but I think it was called the Nelson.

pmc1947
 
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Hi pmc1947:

We had a thread on the forum re cently re; King Edward's School,
New Street. Seems it was gone by 1936. Quoting ChrisM's post
"Now have the definitive answer to the question I originally posed - when did the King Edward School building by Charles Barry disappear from New Street? - and post it here for the record.

The building's life was from 30th January 1838 when the School first occupied it to March/April 1936 when it was demolished.

The School had moved out on an unspecified earlier date to its new site in Edgabston. There the permanent replacement buildings had not yet been erected and so the School was housed in temporary accommodation. One of the reasons for the move, it has been suggested, was that the Headmaster had deemed the old building to be a fire risk.

It is a delicious irony that on 6th May 1936, just a few weeks after the demolition pictures were published and certainly before the site had been cleared, it was not the risky old building which caught alight but rather the School's temporary accommodation. The latter was burned to the ground in a conflagration which exercised the attention of 70 fireman and 14 appliances. I expect that the cause was identified as an "an electrical fault". But one might like to think of it as an act of divine retribution for the act of vandalism which had been taking place in New Street. Or perhaps an ancestor of a birminghamhistory forum member had an outraged sense of history and a handy box of matches.

I have some images of varying quality which show what was lost and the work of demolition. These would overload this thread and so I have put them up in a temporary website page here, if anyone wants to look at them.

Chris

(Source of this information and most of the linked images to whom grateful acknowledgement is made: AW, Foundation Archivist, The Schools of King Edward VI in Birmingham). "
 
Yeah, I have seen those great photos. If you zoom in on the Bullring photo...the first one. Down in lower right is 72331 and a mark. I presume that this means Jul 23/1931. and if this is the date of the photo then the top buildings to the left of the Market Hall is the back of King Edwards. It would still have been there then. Strange that there is not a single motorcar.
The Temperance Hotel corner of Moor Street and the first three or four shops up the hill were gone when I first knew it. It was a bombed building site.
 
The shop with the Corner blind is Pattersons.... I went many a time downstairs to have lunch with my school friend.... Sadly she died this time last year. My school used to be opposite there in Corporation Street. Just up from Pattersons they build Rackhams... we watched it being built from our class room. Opposite our school was The Midland Education.... a wonderful place to explore... They had lots of coloured crayons and pencils... I can smell the place now. Georgie
 
Georgie Garrett said:
The shop with the Corner blind is Pattersons.... I went many a time downstairs to have lunch with my school friend.... Sadly she died this time last year. My school used to be opposite there in Corporation Street. Just up from Pattersons they build Rackhams... we watched it being built from our class room. Opposite our school was The Midland Education.... a wonderful place to explore... They had lots of coloured crayons and pencils... I can smell the place now. Georgie
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Georgie. We used to go to the Midland Education shop about 10+ years ago just pass the subway opposite the Singer sewing machine shop where you could catch the number 14 bus. I used to love looking around in that shop.
 
George1468 said:
Funny I should pick this up today. I was thinking of a similar queue on
Saturday mornings at Rudders and Payne, Aston Hall Road. I was a regular. We were after the off-cuts of timber, for firewood (1940-1945 ish).[/quo
George 1468. Our Rudders and Paynes were in Chester Street but I did not know that people queued for off cuts there. I did not get to that other part of the world as it was to us in those days.
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Midland Education

GER22VAN said:
Georgie. We used to go to the Midland Education shop about 10+ years ago just pass the subway opposite the Singer sewing machine shop where you could catch the number 14 bus. I used to love looking around in that shop.
Click to expand...

The old Midland Education was in Corporation Street near the New Street end.... this was back in the early 1960's... I suppose opposite C & A (can you remember that store... C = Cheap & A = Attractive) or C and Amose ... we also knew it as)... I believe the Midland Ed then moved up near to where Lewis's was. so that would have been near the subways. I left Birmingham in 1966... Georgie
 
Georgie, I went to Pitman's College in the early l950's and remember a lot of
shops in the area. There is a photograph of the school on the Friends Reunited site, a couple of years before it was pulled down. We could see across into the Midland Education from our classroom. It was a great area to explore then. I used to go all over the place in my lunch hour; as long as you came back at class time no one seemed to care where you went.

I certainly remember C&A. I bought many clothes from there
over the years. I believe H. Samuels moved into the Midland Education ground floor space but I think even they have gone now. The streetscape hasn't changed that much on the left hand side going down to New Street.
 
Jennyann, What year did you leave Pitman's? I went there in 1959 and Pitmans was there a few more years before moving to Norfolk House, Smallbrook Ringway. Can you remember the hotel that was next door in Corporation Street...? I think I printed off the old photo of Pitmans... I must take another look.. All gone now.. I have a photo of the new building..WOW. Georgie
 
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