We decided we would take the train to Birmingham rather than drive as it was hard to find a car park that was near to where we are staying so we had a really relaxed start to the day, our discount tickets meant we caught the 11:20 from Bracknell. We packed this morning then tried to remember the process to lock up the house as it is the first time since we got back from skiing on 13th February 2020 that the house has been left unattended! We walked to the station which took at little longer than normal then got on the train for the first part of the journey, Bracknell to Reading. Once we got to Reading we went and brought something for lunch and headed round to the train. For some reason we have different seats for the first part of the journey and the second (we brought split tickets as they were cheaper) so we took a chance and sat in the seats we have booked for the second part of the journey. I think the seat booking system leaves something to be desired as everyone seemed to be having problems finding their seats. Despite asking for a table when we got the tickets we have both ended up with window seats which was nice and meant we both had a good view of the countryside. We managed to stay in the same seats all the way despite stopped at Oxford then next stop Banbury which is where our tickets changed and we were entitled to the seats we were sitting in. A few more stops at Leamington Spa, which is never where I think it is and Coventry before we arrived in Birmingham about 2pm and walked round to the hotel to see if we could drop our bags, we couldn’t check in until 4pm but we were lucky and the room was ready so we checked in and went up to the room to drop the bags before picking up the camera and the walk planned for today and heading out. We are staying in a canal side hotel but unfortunately we don’t seem to have easy access to the canal, we got a little bit lost trying to find it but all was well in the end. It is said that Birmingham has more canals than Venice which is actually true, the city has 35 miles of canals compared to Venice’s 26. At its peak the Birmingham canal network was over 160 miles, these waterways kept the land locked West Midlands at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution. We started our walk along the Worcester & Birmingham canal but very quickly joined the Birmingham Canal Navigations (BCN) we are staying by the Gas Street basin which is now a very nice, but very commercial area, it was originally full of smoke, fumes and noise where boats laden with coal, iron and glass would queue in the water while teams of men and horses would be working the towpaths. Canal companies made a lot of money, Gas Street is where 2 canals meet, the Worcester & Birmingham (W&B) canal and the Birmingham Canal Navigation, the BCN owners insisted a physical barrier separate the two canals so an 84 foot wall was built to keep them apart, the bar allowed both companies to collect tolls but unfortunately any financial gains were outweighed by the time it took to unload on one side of the basin then reload on the other! Finally a gap was created but planks were laid to stop boats from passing through without paying tolls. The basis in called Gas Street because of the Birmingham light company who extracted gas nearby from burning coal, this was the first place outside London to benefit from public gas lighting, this apparently continued in parts of the city until the 1970s. We walked along the canal looking at what are called the 13 bridges although there isn’t a 1 so it is actually only 12, however it still looked hard work for the barges we actually helped one woman open one of the gates as it was really heavy. The bridges all have ‘metal doors’ which were actually for fire crews who had special permission to access canal water in an emergency. We walked all the way to the end of the locks, which seemed to be quite a drop, then walked back to lock 9 where we diverted off to do the ‘Historic Jewellery Quarter’ walk. We joined the walk at the Birmingham Assay Office, hallmarking silver dates back to 1300 and is one of the oldest forms of customer protection. Silver made in Birmingham previously had to be hallmarked in Chester, Matthew Boulton joined with manufacturers in Sheffield to petition Parliament to establish hallmarking offices in Birmingham and Sheffield. The bill was finally passed in 1773 and it is said that the Anchor mark of Birmingham is because Birmingham and Sheffield supporters met in a pub called the Crown and Anchor so Sheffield used the Crown and Birmingham the anchor! We walked past various factories on the way to the Jewellery Quarter, before arriving at St Paul’s Square. Birmingham had been a small manufacturing centre for many centuries, surprising because coal and iron or had to be brought in from the Black Country (Dudley, Walsall and Wolverhampton) but better road conditions and links helped Birmingham from the early days. Birmingham was becoming overcrowded and was not a pleasant place for successful entrepreneurs, therefore the Colmore family (the local landowners) developed a fashionable new residential area to the west of the city. Built between 1777 and 1779 St Paul’s square benefitted from the prevailing south-westerly winds meaning the air was cleaner. St. Paul’s square is Birmingham’s only remaining Georgian square, and having the church in the centre demonstrated a grand piece of town planning. The walk took us around a number of buildings that were previously houses, then workshops and now houses again, a few have been converted to museums but there weren’t open today. The Jewellery quarter became such an important tourist attraction in 1995 the ‘Jewellery line project’ was opened linking the rest of Birmingham with the quarter by Tain and later (in 1995) tram. We walked to the Chamberlain Clock which is in the middle of a road junction and celebrates Joseph Chamberlain who after a successful career in manufacturing applied the lessons he learned in business to local administration, he became Mayor of Birmingham in 1873 and transformed the town and its services. This crossroads has two banks, although never a financial centre banking was important for the expansion of businesses in Victorian times as a reliable way of transferring money as well as a safe haven for their wealth, Birmingham gave England two of its major banks, the former Midland Bank, now part of HSBC and Lloyds. Eventually we arrived at the site of the former Birmingham Mint, entrepreneur Matthew Boulton developed steam presses, he was engaged to make coins of the realm as at the time the Royal Mint still made coins using hand presses, he made the famous ‘cartwheel pennies’. Later Ralph Heaton brought the property and presses and continued to make coins at the Mint, he won contracts to produce coins for all over the world, especially countries of the Empire. The company continued to prosper and became the largest private mint in the world, recently they produced several million 1 and 2 euro coins, unfortunately production has now ceased and only the front of the building has been retained. By this time we decided we had enough walking so started heading back to the hotel, we stopped for something to eat on the way back at Zizzi, then after being fed and having a few drinks we went back to the hotel (which bizarrely is right next door to the Pakistan Consulate) where I had a coffee and we turned in for the night to recharge our batteries ready for tomorrow’s shopping trip!
