Victorian Photo Album Nᵒ.10: Chaucer's Head Bookshop (New Street, c. 1870s)
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Chaucer's Head bookshop at 74 New Street, c. 1870s. Held at Birmingham Archive @ Library of Birmingham. |
See more of the Victorian Photo Album.
The Chaucer's Head bookshop was at the top on New Street, and was one of four shops set alongside the south wall of Christ Church (see more on these shops here). Christ Church was where the "Floozie in the Jacuzzi" is now. The bookshop was founded at 74 New Street in 1830 by John Cadby, who was succeeded by William Downing (whose name is seen in the photograph) in 1870. It was removed to Temple Row in 1890.*1* Downing was a well known local bookseller specialising in antiquarian books, and with customers ranging from local politician Joseph Chamberlain to Arts and Crafts designer William Morris.*2*
Advert for Chaucer's Head from Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men by E. Edwards (1877). |
Enamel (& Metal) Things Nᵒ.6: A Pair of Flowery Wall Plaques for the First Day of Spring (c. 1760s)
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Private collection. |
A Select Collection of the most beautiful Flowers, Drawn after Nature, after Heckel (1795, reprint from c. 1750-1770 prints). Held at the V&A. One of a set of six. |
Metal (and Enamel) Things Nᵒ.9: The Making of Gilt & Enamel Equipage (c. 1760s)
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Equipage with egg-shaped containers and etui, c. 1760s. Wolverhampton Museum Collection. |
Object Focus:
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Equipage with two hooks, containers and etui, c. 1760s. MET Collection. |
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Equipage with two hooks and etui, c. 1760s. Philadelphia Museum of Art Collection. |
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Equipage with elongated chain, containers and etui, c. 1760s. V&A Collection. |
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Three loose etui made in Birmingham and/or the Black Country, c. 1760s. One etui (blue with flowers) made c. 1900. Sold at Christie's for £2000 in 2011. |
- The eighteenth-century British enamel trade.
- Other Birmingham/Black Country enamelled goods include the enamel menagerie, as well as other enamelled things.
Objects In Use Nᵒ.1: Equipage - Displaying Workmanship & Craftswomanship in the Eighteenth Century
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A gilt metal equipage with enamel adornments and watch, made in Birmingham, c. 1770. Sold at Bonhams in 2011 for £3,250. |
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Portrait of Miss Mary Edwards by William Hogarth, 1742. Frick Collection. |
Behold this equipage by MATHERS wroughtWith fifty guineas (a great pen'orth!) bought!See on the tooth-pick MARS and CUPID strive,And both the struggling figures seem to liue.Upon the bottom see the Queen's bright face;A myrtle foliage round the thimble case;JOVE, JOVE himself does on the scissars [sic] shine,The metal and the workmanship divine.*
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Lady Jane Mathew and her Daughters, artist unknown c. 1790. Yale Centre for British Art. |
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Equipage with two hooks with egg-shaped containers and etui, made in Birmingham, c. 1760. Wolverhampton Museum Collection. |
Victorian Photo Album Nᵒ.9: Looking Through Windows - Ornaments & Things Inside (Part Four)
Tour of Lost Birmingham Nᵒ.61: A Regency Stay at the Hen and Chickens Hotel (New Street)
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The Hen and Chicken's on New Street, with King Edward's school to the right, c. 1808. Coaches would enter the rear stables through the arch. Held by Birmingham Museums. |
Were you at the “Hen and Chickens,” from which I write, however, you would be very well content with your quarters [...] I am surrounded by vases of beautiful flowers, many of them the choice productions of the green house in our rude climate, which ornament and perfume the halls and landings of the staircases, and impart an air bordering on elegance, to the general neatness and comfort of the establishment. The inn at which we are, is said to be the best in this great work-shop of iron and steel [...].*So noted Charles Samuel Stuart, an American visiting England and Ireland in 1832. He did not remain long in Birmingham, he felt it very modern, and the manufactures that made it worthy of visiting made it smokey and noisy. But Stuart did remain long enough to visit some manufactories before he left. He popped to the Pantechnetheca over the street, and up to St. Philip's church to visit the nearby premises of Edward Thomason on Church Street. Find details of his visit here.
as to the noise, never did I sleep at that enormous Hen and Chickens, to which usually my destiny brought me, but I had reason to complain that the discreet hen did not gather her vagrant flock to roost at less favourable hours. Till two or three, I was kept waking by those who were retiring; and about three commenced the morning functions of the porter, or of “boots”, or of “underboots”, who began their rounds for collecting the several freights for the Highflyer, or the Tally-ho, or the Bang-up, to all points of the compass, and too often (as much happen in such immense establishments) blundered into my room with the appalling, “Now, sir, the horses are coming out.” So that rarely, indeed, have I happened to sleep in Birmingham.**
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Front elevation and plan of stables for Hen and Chickens, 1836. Birmingham Archive: MS 3069/13/2/66. |
Advert for Wm Waddell's Hen and Chickens, 1830-1835. Engraved by J. Garner from a drawing by Samuel Lines. Held by Birmingham Museums. |
Victorian Photo Album Nᵒ.8: Looking Through Windows - Greenery in the "Slums" (Part Three)
Part three (of three parts) of Looking Through Windows (Greenery). See part one, here and part two, here. Please contact to use these cropped images in this way - mappingbirmingham@gmail.com
During the late Victorian period many of central Birmingham's poorer housing was earmarked for demolition in a drive to revamp the city centre and move those living in these houses out to newer homes in the outer parts of the town. Hundreds of photographs of 'slum housing' (Victorian terminology, not mine) were taken of the many courts of back to back housing in the town. These images were taken was to assert the reasoning for their demolition, that they were run down, so they "frame" the buildings to tell this story. This is only one story, though, as these buildings were filled with families living their lives and beautifying their homes, and if you zoom into the images you can find traces of this.
Paper Remnants Nᵒ.11: Billinge & Edwards Tool Makers on Snow Hill (c. 1810)
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Trade card for Billinge & Edwards on Snow Hill, c. 1810. Engraved by Cottrell. Held at Yale Center for British Art. B1978.43.956. |
Object Focus Nᵒ.8: Catherine Hutton's Poem on Love & a Cosy Cottage
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Held at Birmingham Archive in the Hutton Collection. |
Birmingham Women Nᵒ. 1: Catherine Hutton, Writer and Home Crafter (1756-1846)
Catherine Hutton (11 February 1756 to 13 March 1846) was part of the Birmingham Hutton family, the daughter of stationer, book seller and historian William Hutton and his wife Sarah Cock.* Catherine was a weaver of tales as well as a needlecrafter, and was putting pen to paper right up to her death at the age of 91. She was a particular fan of Jane Austen, as she explains 'I have been going through a course of novels by lady authors, beginning with Mrs Brooke and ending with Miss Austen, who is my especial favourite. I had always wished, not daring to hope, that I might be something like Miss Austen; and, having finished her works, I took to my own, to see if I could find any resemblance'.* In 1813 she published her first novel, The Miser Married (view here), and published two subsequent novels, The Welsh Mountaineer (1817, volume one here) and Oakwell Hall (1819). Catherine published other fiction and articles in magazines, and her published letters outline the life of a middle-class woman at this time.
The Hutton family business and home were both attacked during the Birmingham riots of 1791, which targeted local dissenters and religious non-conformists, and the Hutton family were Unitarians. Their shop in Birmingham was burnt down and the family had taken shelter at their family home at Bennett's Hill, a few miles from the town. On hearing that rioters were on their way there too, the family had to quickly flee, and leave the house and their possessions to the mob.
The riots had been very hard for Catherine and she took to company less and less. Two years after the experience she wrote to a friend: 'Last Monday I broke the spell by visiting the Miss Mainwarings, and I was found so rusticated, so antiquated, that the first thing they did was to take my cap to pieces and make it up in a different form. Now, mark my resolution. I visited three families on the three following days, and I have engaged myself for two evenings next week. Be so good when you write to say something about fashion, that I, who used to be an example, may not be quite a scare-crow' [letter to Mrs. André, 2 Sep 1792].* In her isolation, Catherine took joy from tending to her garden, stating in the same letter that 'my inexhaustible fund of amusement is the garden' asking to be sent 'some flower seeds and bulbs. I should particularly like some feathered hyacinths' [ibid].
Catherine's love gardening and flowers probably influenced her production of a patchwork bedcover surrounded with an array of appliqued flowers made in 1804. The design included jasmine, roses, tulips and lilac, and, as historian Elaine Mitchell notes, the 'appliqued plants delivered a cornucopia of botanical specimens from around the globe into the house' (see here).** It also bought some of Catherine's well-loved garden indoors and the needlework would have likely soothed her in the years she spent more isolated after the affects of the riots.
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Section of Catherine Hutton's bed cover (335cm by 362cm), 1804. Birmingham Museum Collections (20015.86.1). Photograph copyright Elaine Mitchell. |
Another of Catherine's surviving creations is a small purse made using simple lace-making techniques:
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Part of the Hutton collection at the Library of Birmingham. |
Tour of Lost Birmingham Nᵒ.60: Turner's Brass Houses (Coleshill Street, c. 1740)
Interior Mr. Turner's Brass Works from R. R. Angerstein's Illustrated Travel Diary, 1753-1755. |
Reinhold Rücker Angerstein was a Swedish metallurgist from a family of iron masters, who extensively travelled Britain's industrial works in the early 1750s, including many in Birmingham and nearby. In 1754 he visited Turner's brass works in Birmingham:
The brass-works [...] belongs to Mr Turner and consists of nine furnaces with three built together in each of three separate buildings. The furnaces are heated with mineral coal, of which 15 tons is used for each furnace, and melting lasting ten hours. Each furnace holds nine pots, 14 inches high and nine inches diameter at the top. Each pot is charged with 41 pounds of copper and 50 pounds of calamine. Mixed with [char]coal. During charging I observed that a handful of coal and calamine was first placed on the bottom of the pot, then came the mixture, which was packed in tightly, followed by about a pound of copper in small pieces, and finally again coal and calamine without copper, covering the top. This procedure was said to lengthen the life of the pot both at the top and the bottom. [...] There are six workers for the nine furnaces and casting takes place twice every 24 hours.*1*
In 1782, William Hutton stated that the 'manufacture of brass was introduced by the family of Turner, about 1740, who erected those works at the south end of Coleshill-street' (see map, below). Although writing in 1783, Hutton first visited Birmingham in the 1740s and moved to the town in 1750, so would have some recollection of the early brass trade. He also said of the works that 'Under the black clouds which arose from this corpulent tunnel, some of the trades collected their daily supply of brass'.*2* Those 'black clouds' can be seen rising from the chimney's of Turner's 'Brass Works' on the 1753 East Prospect of Birmingham:
St. Bartholomew's Chapel and smoking chimneys of the brass works, from the East Prospect of Birmingham (1753). |
Section of the 1751 Map of Birmingham showing Coleshill Street and Turner's Brass House. |
The 'Mr Turner' noted by Angerstein was Thomas Turner.*4* It is possible that Thomas had made buckles before opening his brass-making works on Coleshill Street, as there was definitely a buckle maker called Thomas Turner working in Birmingham in the 1730s.*5*
Victorian Photo Album Nᵒ.7: Looking Through Windows - Greenery in the "Slums" (Part Two)
Part two (of three parts) of Looking Through Windows (Greenery). See part one, here. Please contact to use these cropped images in this way - mappingbirmingham@gmail.com
During the late Victorian period many of central Birmingham's poorer housing was earmarked for demolition in a drive to revamp the city centre and move those living in these houses out to newer homes in the outer parts of the town. Hundreds of photographs of 'slum housing' (Victorian terminology, not mine) were taken of the many courts of back to back housing in the town. These images were taken was to assert the reasoning for their demolition, that they were run down, so they "frame" the buildings to tell this story. This is only one story, though, as these buildings were filled with families living their lives and beautifying their homes, and if you zoom into the images you can find traces of this.Tour of Lost Birmingham Nᵒ.59: St. Martin's Parsonage (Smallbrook Street)
St. Martin's Parsonage, from a drawing by David Cox and engraved by William Radcliffe, published 25 March 1827. Hand coloured later. |
St. Martin's Parsonage was demolished in 1826. The image above was drawn in about 1825 or 1826 by David Cox, and the original drawing is held by Birmingham Museums (see here). The Parsonage housed a long line of the rectors of St. Martin's, and stood a little distance from the church, up Edgbaston Street and at the base of Smallbrook Street.
It was described in 1830, not long after its demolition, as an 'ancient, half-timbered edifice, coated with plaster' and that the 'entrance was through a wicket in the large doors of a long range of low building[s] next to the street'. The building had originally been encircled by a moat, as seen in snippets from the 1731 map of Birmingham below, but only dried-up parts of the moat remained when it was demolished despite the engraving including the moat filled with water.*1* An Act of Parliament was required for its demolition and acquired in 1825, which described the building as 'a most ancient and inconvenient building' which was 'very ill-suited for the residence of the rector'.*2* Parts of it were very ancient indeed.
Snippet from 1731 map showing St. Martin's church and parsonage. |
Snippet from Bernard Sleigh's version of the 1731 map showing St. Martin's church and parsonage. |
Close-up of the Parsonage from Bernard Sleigh's version of the 1731 map. |
Charlotte Brontë's copy of the 1827 engraving, c. 1832. Private collection. |