Georgian Terraces: The Square

'The Square' was an early eighteenth-century urban development completed in about 1713. This was elite living, including fine townhouses which were bought and lived in by some of the town's wealthiest inhabitants.

Birmingham Printers: Thomas Warren, Lady Holte & Links to Samuel Johnson

Printed in Joseph Hill's Bookmakers of Old Birmingham (1907),
the original in Birmingham Archive.

Thomas Warren (1700-1767) was first noted as a 'bookseller' in 1727.* He sold a range of works, some of them known about through the shopping bills of Lady Holte, of Aston Hall, who visited frequently between 1729 and 1730. She bought two volumes of Gulliver's Travels; Hutchinson's 'On ye Passions'; spelling books, presumably for her children; 'Headley's method of Teaching'; the 'Beggars Opera', first performed in 1728; two volumes of 'Cyclopedia'; as well as many more publications. She had books bound and bought ink, and also paid for 'Reading' certain books, so presumably Warren offered a lending service. Warren also sold Holte other items, including a 'Pair of fine Pockett Globes' which he bought in from London. Books allowed the reader to explore the expanding eighteenth-century world, so the globes were an apt addition to the bookshop, and Warren sold books about globes and exploration too.**

Tour of Lost Birmingham Nᵒ.52: The Swan Hotel in Pictures (High Street)

Swan Hotel in 1829.

The Swan Hotel was a large and dominant coaching inn on the High Street throughout the eighteenth-century and before. According to Joseph Hill it was an ancient tavern, the land of which stretching across the corner of High and New Streets, and belonged to a family called Rastell during the reign of Henry VIII. Between 1666 and 1688 the landlord of the Swan was Edward Crank, who demolished the old tavern, and built another set back from the street, with a large yard in front for carriages, and erected a row of five smart town houses along the street (seen on the left of the trade card, above).* The Swan was a haunt of Samuel Johnson, who wrote in 1755 'I was extremely pleased to find that you have not forgotten your old friend, who yet recollects the evenings which we have passed together at Warren's and the Swan'. Johnson resided in Birmingham in the early 1730s with Edmund Hector (to whom he writes above) at Thomas Warren's bookshop, which situated opposite the Swan at that time, as Warren's shop moved about.

Contemporary colouring of the 1829 card.

In the 1730s, as the notice below announces, you could catch a stage-coach to London at the Swan at six on a Monday morning, and return 'if God permit' on the Saturday. Take a journey on the Birmingham to London stage-coach here.

A map of the Swan Hotel was produced for a sale of the property in 1836. Although the hotel survived after this date, many of the extended parts of the property, such as the stables on Worcester Street, were being sold in different lots. The railway came to Birmingham in 1838 with the opening of Curzon Street Station, and whether prospective buyers would have been aware of the impact of the looming rail network, this was the end of an era for coaching inns like the Swan.

Held at Birmingham Archive.

The 'Coach Office', which can be seen in green on the map (Lot 1) on New Street, is depicted in the image below. The street on the right of 'W. JONES', the trunk manufacturer, was Worcester Street, and when the Rotunda was built, this became Worcester Passage, which has now gone itself, but was covered and cut underneath the Rotunda building.

New Street (left) at the corner of Worcester Street (right), c. 1840.
By Thomas Underwood, held at Birmingham Archive.

A later map of the Swan, from the 1850s, shows that the grand open entrance, where the coaches would turn (as seen in the 1820s trade card), had been built up with new shops, and the hotel itself had been limited to the site behind the New Street Coach Office.

1850s map showing the Swan Hotel.

The Twentieth Century Swan
The hotel survived until the late 1950s, but was demolished before 1961 to make way for the new Rotunda. The photos below were taken in 1932 by William A. Clark (all held at Birmingham Archive).

The swan over the door. 

The entrance door with the swan over, looking up
Swan Alley. Note Fred Burn on the right.

Poor image of the alley from the other direction. Not taken by Clark.

Landing of the Swan Hotel.

~ FINIS ~

Swan atop the left-hand building of the Hotel in 1800.
From Bisset's directory.

I PREDICT A RIOT!

'The Test ____' published 20th February 1790. Depicting the percieved
threat of Dissenters to 'Church and King'. This cartoon helps to depict
some of the tensions leading up to the Priestley or 'Church and King'
riots in Birmingham on 14th July 1791.

Joseph Priestley is depicted in the bottom right corner.

'The Flame of Liberty' is about to burn down the building represented
by the symbols of Church (to the left) and King (to the right).

The cartoon above (published February 1790) is fictional, but depicts the perceived threat of the religious Dissenters by the mainstream Anglican church. Joseph Priestley (second image), a Dissenter, is shown as part of a mob bent on the destruction of Church and King (third image). The following post will explore this backdrop to the Priestley riots (also called the Church and King riots, as the mob were for "Church and King") that began on 14th July 1791, and were directed at the Dissenters.

After the Revolution in France there was a rising feeling in England that political change could occur here as well, both from those who desired it and those who feared it. But unlike France, the desire for political change here was greatly tied up with religion, as many fighting for political reform were religious Dissenters who questioned the Anglican church. Dissenters were not allowed to become Members of Parliament, nor study at university, due to the Test Acts that had been written during the Restoration to prevent Catholics gaining power. They wished to change this so that they could have more say, but Parliamnet seemed rooted in opposition to this. As well as this though, Dissenters, and others, fought for universal suffrage, the removal of Rotton Boroughs (boroughs with only a handful of residents where MP's could buy their way in) and to allow growing towns like Birmingham to send members to Parliament (as at this time Birmingham's thousands of residents had no representation in Parliament).

Dissenters attack the Church

Due to the restraint on education many ambitious Dissenters entered trade and manufacturing, which is why there was a strong base of Dissenting groups in Birmingham. By far the largest group were the Unitarians, of which Joseph Priestley was a part, as well as being preacher at the New Meeting House on Moor Street. Priestley was highly outspoken in matters of religion and politics, which worried many; Samuel Johnson stated that Priestley's 'work unsettles everything'.* After the French Revolution Priestley's fervour stepped up a notch, at one point comparing free enquiry to 'laying gunpowder, grain by grain'.* Although he later declared that the allusion to the Gunpowder Plot was unintentional, he became set in the eyes of his critics as a dangerous man, and was nicknamed Gunpowder Joe. Perhaps if Priestley's and the other Dissenters ideas on political reform had not been tied up with religion the story of this country may have been a different one.

Since the commencement of the French Revolution the friction between groups and ideas was heightened, there was fear of the air of revolution and at the beginning of 1790 Samuel Parr wrote that a 'storm is gathering, depend upon it [...] and if the church does not exert itself it will fall'.** The church certainly did exert itself as in 1790 George Croft preached at St. Martin's against the Dissenters and warned that 'while their meeting-houses are open they are weakening and almost demolishing the whole fabric of Christianity'.** The reply from Unitarian minister John Hobson was that Croft was 'viciously prejudiced [...] persecuting and abusive'. And Joseph Priestley himself was a prolific writer and published many pamphlets and leaflets addressing his opponents head-on. Within Birmingham a specific committee was formed to oppose the Dissenter groups, and by the end of 1790 troops were ordered as rioting or similar disorder seemed highly possible. This died down but in July 1791, after the the French Revolution Dinner was announced, trouble began to stir again.**

NOTES
* References on request
** This paragraph written using research from: R. B. Rose, The Priestley Riots of 1791