Newsletter Issue 4 Friends of June 2010 the Centre for History Sharing the Past with the Future A Glimpse of Vanished By Dorothy Vuong

A fascinating collection of photos of Birmingham in the 1950s and 1960s is available on the web repository. The photos were taken by Phyllis Nicklin, who was the Staff Tutor in Geography in the University of Birmingham‘s former Department of Extra Mural Studies in the 1950s and 1960s. Phyllis died in post in 1969 and left behind thousands of slides she had taken for her classes.

The images are of the city centre and a selection of districts and suburbs. They document Birmingham‘s buildings, urban topography and street scenes and show many parts of the city during its re-development and the construction of the ring roads.

446 slides held at the University’s Orchard Centre Library were digitised by the ‘Chrysalis’ digitisation project of the West Midlands Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. The original project site is alas no more, but the slides are available again at http://epapers.bham.ac.uk/chrysalis.html

Some further functionality has been added, including geographical co-ordinates and a map to the approximate locations of the photos. Each image is also linked to the same location as it is today, via Google maps and streetview. The images are publicly available under a Creative Commons (Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike) Licence. They are available for anyone to download, edit, re-use and redistribute for non-commercial purposes. Picture credit: Great Russell Street Newtown, 1967 http://www.cbamh.bham.ac.uk Friends of the Centre for West Midlands History

Day School: Plant Hunters, Parks and Gardens: Developments in Garden History in Birmingham and the Midlands By Elaine Mitchell

Whilst the future looks bright for some of The audience travelled far with Simon Gulliver Birmingham’s historic landscapes, it remains less too, with several trips to China in the company of certain for others and in March an enthusiastic and plant hunter, Ernest Wilson. Whilst most of us go knowledgeable audience gathered to hear about to the local garden centre for our plants, we forget exciting plans for Winterbourne, the University’s that many of them originally came from rather own botanical garden in Edgbaston, as well as further afield. It is thanks to Wilson that we can concerns about Highbury Park, created around the enjoy the glorious sight of the Handkerchief Tree in former home of Joseph Chamberlain in full flight. Moor Green. Returning to Edgbaston, David Lambert explored Garden historian Phillada Ballard illuminated the the conservation of the Guinea Gardens, complex history and development of Highbury from neighbours to Birmingham Botanical Gardens but, private garden to public park, a history that has like Winterbourne, a well-kept secret. In the 19th seen Chamberlain’s ‘rus in urbe’ become what she century, Guinea Gardens surrounded Birmingham considers one of the finest public parks. However, and these groups of small plots provided a whilst much of the original landscape remains, welcome respite for city dwellers to grow modifications and concerns about the future of the vegetables and flowers or simply create their own house raise issues about how we deal with the private gardens. Their survival is extremely rare. challenges of maintaining historic landscapes. Both John Nettlefold and Ernest Wilson are Winterbourne, an Arts and Crafts garden commemorated with Blue Plaques recently erected developed around the home of John and Margaret by The . For opening Nettlefold, has perhaps been one of the best kept hours of Winterbourne House and Garden go to secrets of Birmingham but is now set to become www.winterbourne.org.uk and for The an important visitor attraction thanks to its recent Birmingham Botanical Gardens & Glasshouses, refurbishment. Curator, Lee Hale discussed the www.birminghambotanicalgardens.org.uk. For international influences on English Arts and Crafts more information on Edgbaston Guinea Gardens garden design. go to www.edgbastonguineagardens.org.uk. Sharing the Past with the Future Annual Conference 2010 By Paul Fantom

The Annual Conference of the Centre for West Peter Rhodes, a columnist for The Express and Star Midlands History was held on 20th March. Taking newspaper, gave a fascinating account of some of as its theme War and Society in the West the experiences of local people during the First Midlands, the conference, which was chaired by World War. Zeppelins and Bayonets: West Midlands Dr Malcolm Dick, featured six presentations Civilians and Soldiers in the Great War drew covering the regional experience from extensively on reminiscences and stories told to Anglo-Saxon times up to and including the Second him by people who had lived through this period. World War. Dr Stephen Parker of the University of Worcester The session opened with a keynote lecture by presented Keep Praying Through: Religion and the Dr Steven Bassettof the University of Home Front in Birmingham During World War Two, Birmingham’s School of History and Cultures, who which looked at the contribution to the war effort spoke on the topic of Fortifying Mercia: Public of religion and its wider impact on the mainstream Defences in the West Midlands in the Anglo-Saxon of events and experience, of culture and Period. Dr Bassett demonstrated how these participation, during the war. As such, this work fortifications have shaped the landscape and offered a further dimension to understanding the continue to have an impact up to the present day. relationship between war and society.

Dr Malcolm Hislop of Birmingham Archaeology The final presentation of the day was a thought- considered Military Architecture or Military Chic? provoking topic delivered by Jahan Mahmood, a Medieval Castellated Buildings in the West community historian. Birmingham’s Muslim Midlands. He highlighted local examples, including Communities and Muslim soldiers in World War castles at Dudley and Stafford, and offered a Two considered the linkages between the martial reappraisal of their military credentials. races of British India and contemporary This illustrated how the emphasis of castle design communities. Numerous examples of heroism altered over time, from being concerned with during the Second World War were provided, functional military value to that of making a including that of Noor Inayat Khan, the first female striking visual impact and being the focus radio operator to be sent into occupied France of economic power and status. by the Special Operations Executive. Betrayed to the Germans, she endured torture by the Gestapo Dr Andrew Hopper of the Centre for English without divulging any information, before being Local History at the University of Leicester provided murdered in Dachau Concentration Camp. She was insight into the regional aspects of the English Civil posthumously awarded the George Cross, one of War with his presentation on Divided War Efforts: Britain’s highest awards for gallantry. Factional Infighting and Garrison Warfare in the West Midlands, 1642-1646. Drawing upon the Are you reading this but are not a member of examples of the striking jealousies, rivalries and the Friends? If you would like to join contact the side changing that occurred, he explored Dr Malcolm Dick, Centre for West Midlands the strategies of the local commanders of both History, School of History and Cultures, parliamentary and royalist forces, together with University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, the crucial role played by the West Midlands Birmingham, B15 2TT or email during this conflict. [email protected] for further information. Friends of the Centre for West Midlands History

Visit to St Nicolas Place By Roger Bruton

The Friends’ visit to St Nicolas Place at Kings Norton in March was an opportunity to study at first hand the buildings and results of the work undertaken on site since the project won the BBC’s Restoration programme in 2004. The £2.5m, four year project has not only saved the Tudor Merchant’s House and the Old Grammar School but, by adaptive re-use and the successful architectural conjunction of old and new, has seen the delivery of a flourishing heritage site, archive and valuable community resource.

Twenty-two Friends and their friends were treated to a presentation on the history of the buildings on the site, an understanding of what was involved in the restoration project, what the goals of the trust were and the current uses of and community roles fulfilled by St Nicolas Place. The subsequent guided tour of the restored buildings gave first-hand evidence of how sympathetically the restorations had been managed.

Future events for Friends of Birmingham Archives and Heritage (FOBAH) 20th June 2010 2pm-3.30pm Historical walk around Birmingham city centre lead by Dr Chris Upton. Please contact Rachel MacGregor at Birmingham Archives and Heritage or via email [email protected] for more details and booking.

Date for your diaries Hall has recently re-opened following a major refurbishment of the site. The Stables Range now contains exhibitions about the history of the Hall, as well as Aston itself. There is also a cafe and a shop. We are in the process of organising a visit on Friday, 15th October, which will include a Above: The Old Grammar School Kings Norton where the top guided tour at 1pm. Full details will be provided in floor is older than the ground floor. Below: Friends of CWMH due course. in the schoolroom in the Old Grammar School, St Nicolas Place. Photographs taken by Roger Bruton. Friends of the CentreSharing for West the Midlands Past with History the Future

‘The People’s Charter and no surrender!’: Chartist Voices in Birmingham By Stephen Roberts

Whenever I sit on platform one at Snow Hill Arthur O’Neill, a man of quiet determination, was railway station, waiting for the train to Worcester, buried at St. Mary’s Church in Handsworth in 1896 I gaze into Livery Street. It doesn’t take me long to – though, unfortunately, it is no longer possible to summon up the sight of a Chartist preacher locate his grave. strolling to his chapel. This preacher was Arthur O’Neill and he ran the only Christian Chartist Another profoundly interesting Birmingham Chartist Church in England. was George White. White was imprisoned on no fewer than ten occasions for his political activities. O’Neill had arrived in Birmingham from Glasgow in His Chartist campaigning in Birmingham was brought December 1840 to take charge of this new church, to an end after the defeat of the strikes of summer which was at that time located in Newhall Street. 1842 when he was imprisoned in Warwick Gaol. He believed deeply that it was his Christian duty to He had been a wanted man for several days before fight oppression and uphold justice and the rights of the authorities got their hands on him – though the poor. He was a man with very advanced ideas. several ‘raw lobsters’ (as the Chartists called the He urged his congregation not just to campaign for police) were thrown into the canal as White and his their political rights, but also to embrace pacifism, supporters tried to prevent his arrest. teetotalism and vegetarianism. The congregation numbered about 250 by August 1842 when O’Neill White was a different sort of Chartist to O’Neill. was arrested and imprisoned for supporting striking He did not advocate peaceful persuasion as a miners in the Black Country. means of getting the vote, but rather a strategy of confrontation – mass meetings and the disruption After spending a year in Stafford Gaol, he of middle class meetings in the town hall returned to Birmingham. Unlike his fellow Chartist would, he believed, intimidate the authorities. prisoner Thomas Cooper with whom he shared a In Birmingham White had been a paid cell, his religious faith had not been shaken by the correspondent for the famous Chartist newspaper experience. O’Neill was baptized in 1846 and spent the Northern Star and in the mid-1850s he briefly the rest of his long life as a campaigning Baptist re-appeared in the Black Country as the editor minister. When, in 1867, there was a partial of short-lived periodical called The Democrat. This enfranchisement of working men, O’Neill was remarkable man, a rough diamond certainly but a present alongside the greatly-revered John Bright sincere advocate of the people’s rights, died a at two great meetings which each attracted up to pauper in a Sheffield workhouse in 1868. 250,000 people from Birmingham and surrounding towns. Birmingham was not, during the 1840s, a Chartist stronghold, but the lives of these two men should During the second half of the 19th century no man not be forgotten. I have told their stories in Radical worked harder outside Parliament for peace than Politicans and Poets in Early Victorian Britain (1993) O’Neill. He regularly addressed three or four and The Chartist Prisoners (2008). Both books can be meetings across the Midlands each week. Sometimes found in the University of Birmingham’s library. he was jeered; but he never grew angry and never gave up. O’Neill’s adopted town recognized all that If you would like to contribute to our next he had done for democracy and peace in 1885 newsletter, please send editorial and news items to when his portrait was commissioned – sadly this Sally Hoban at [email protected]. Please painting is now lost. note we do reserve the right to edit material. Friends of the Centre for West Midlands History Dr George Barnsby 1919-2010 By Sue Thomas

Regional historian George Barnsby, who died his interests in jazz and football as well as in April, was the author of a series of books history and politics. Despite decades in the and pamphlets charting the history of the Black Country he remained a devotee of working class and labour movement in the Arsenal - and indeed this was the subject of Black Country and Birmingham. his last blog entry written from his hospital bed just a week before he died. A Londoner by birth, George left school at fifteen and was called up in 1939. His time in You can find out more about George Barnsby’s Burma gave him contact with the last days of work at http://gbpeopleslibrary.co.uk the Raj and he developed a lifelong opposition to colonialism which is reflected in his later study of the Bengal famine of 1943-44. The Staffordshire Hoard After discharge, he used his £100 gratuity to enter further education and he gained his Day School degree from the LSE before moving to the Black Country in 1953, where he worked in The Staffordshire Hoard proved as popular as schools and colleges. He took time out to study ever at a well attended University of at the University of Birmingham, receiving his Birmingham Day School on 10th April. Over doctorate for work on the history of the working class in the Black Country. His 130 people came to listen to a series of talks publications included Socialism in Birmingham which included a description of how the and the Black Country (1977) and Birmingham hoard was discovered and plans for its future. Working People (1989), as well as books and A donation from the attendees was given to pamphlets which looked in more detail at the Hoard fund. There is a possibility of housing, the co-operative movement and the future courses on this subject, which will be women’s suffrage campaign. While working announced via the newsletter. as a local historian he always saw his work as contributing to wider historical concerns, for instance using his detailed knowledge of wages and prices to intervene in the long-running Birmingham Archives Online standard of living debate. Birmingham Archives now has an online A committed communist, he became a stalwart catalogue. Just over 300 collections (or five of the local labour movement as well as its per cent of the holdings) are available at the historian. In particular he will be remembered moment but this will be added to and in time for his anti-racist campaigning and support for it will increasingly become a useful tool for multi-cultural education. researchers. Some of the more popular and heavily used collections have been catalogued George embraced new technology with first. For further information visit enthusiasm, building a website which reflected http://calmview.birmingham.gov.uk/ Sharing the Past with the Future

Objects of Affection: Pre-Raphaelite Portraits by John Brett at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham 30th April – 4th July 2010 by Aileen Naylor The new exhibition at the Barber Institute is of interest to Friends of the Centre for West Midlands History because part of it explores connections that the 19th-century artist, John Brett had with Birmingham. Brett is best known for his early Pre-Raphaelite landscapes and later seascapes of the British coast, but this show focuses primarily on his portraits of family, friends and patrons. Most of these portraits are from private collections and exhibited for the first time.

Dr Christiana Payne, whose monograph of John Brett will be published in June, has considered the portraits and Professor Ann Sumner, Director of the Barber Institute, has investigated Brett’s relationship with Birmingham. He regularly exhibited at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists and had many important patrons here, including the iron founder and hardware manufacturer, William Kenrick, the glass manufacturer and meteorologist, Abraham Follett Osler and the architect, John Henry Chamberlain. Landscapes owned by some of these Birmingham figures are on display together with the original notes of a controversial lecture on art and education that Brett gave in the City.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue and a programme of events detailed in brochures available in the Barber Institute foyer.

The Barber Institute of Fine Art is located at the University of Birmingham’s Edgbaston Campus. Admission is free and their opening hours are: Monday - Saturday: 10.00 am - 5.00 pm Sunday: 12 noon - 5.00 pm

Above: Francis Martineau, 203 x 165 mm. Pencil on paper. 1865. Below: Pansy Posing for Jasper, Photograph. © Private Collections Friends of the Centre for West Midlands History

Writing Far Above New Committee Member: Rubies Connie Wan By Anne-Marie Vukelic Connie is currently in the final year of her PhD at the For those of us fascinated by Victorian University of Birmingham history, who has not been educated, where she is undertaking enlightened, and entertained in some way a Collaborative Doctoral by the works of Charles Dickens? Award in association with the Arts and Humanities A visit to Rochester in 2005 motivated me to begin Research Council (AHRC) examining Dickens’ life in greater detail, but to my and the Royal Birmingham surprise I found my attention being drawn Society of Artists (RBSA). repeatedly to the shy, clumsy - somewhat Her studies are focused disorganized - wife who lived her life at the side of on a set of 56 drawings in the permanent collection this hugely talented, impatient, and restless man. of the RBSA by the sons of 19th century Birmingham artist, Samuel Lines (1778-1863). Lines was both an Little has been recorded about Catherine Dickens, artist and drawing master who was born in Coventry and yet, within the numerous pages that have been but moved to work in Birmingham. He later written about her famous husband, I found her succeeded in opening an art academy on Temple Row coming to life; and so began the random jottings West (adjacent to the Old Joint Stock), which he ran which eventually became the novel, Far with his five sons who worked there at various points Above Rubies. in their careers.

Through Catherine’s eyes, I observed her As well as completing a thesis, Connie is also required ambitious young husband progress from unknown to write an academic catalogue related to these works journalism to celebrated authorship. I felt her that depict a range of subjects including views of rural dismay when he sidelined her not once, but twice, Birmingham and studies from nature. As a result, her in preference for her younger sisters, and I research has led her to pursue diverse themes in local experienced her struggle to narrow the gap that history, which have ranged from researching 19th separated their vastly different worlds. century plans of the Herefordshire Beacons, to architectural studies of church interiors in Staffordshire, My research also brought me into contact with the Shropshire and North Wales. Last year, she curated her lives of a number of noteworthy Victorians including first exhibition Rediscovering the Lines Family: William Thackeray, Wilkie Collins and The Drawings of Birmingham and Beyond, which took place Baroness Burdett Coutts; and upon seeing how at the RBSA. Her research interests remain very much their paths crossed with Dickens’ own, I was attached to the Midlands in the nineteenth-century, inspired to include them in the novel in a blend of especially concerning art tuition and the development fact and fiction. of art institutions. As my research and writing drew to an end, I Since joining the committee, Connie has taken an active dreamt of Dickens’ quite vividly one night. I was role in developing the Friends for West Midlands seated on a bench overlooking the Malvern hills, History Research Group, which is designed to bring and, wearing a checked suit and small bowler hat, together people and organisations interested in the he approached me. I cannot remember much of what we said to one another, but I impressed upon region’s rich history. Together with Sally Baggott and Sally him the sadness that I felt for both he and Hoban, she is in the process of establishing events and Catherine that their union had ended so unhappily. projects to support the network of individuals engaged Upon waking, I picked up a pen and wrote what in the group. The group is suitable for, but not restricted eventually became the opening words to the novel. to, active scholars, postgraduate students, heritage professionals or local historians. If you are interested in Far Above Rubies by Anne-Marie Vukelic is joining the group please contact Connie at published by Robert Hale. [email protected].