Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men | Page 5

Lilly and Addinsell's

shop. The New Street frontage was the dwelling house of Mr.
Gottwaltz, the post-master. A little way up Bennetts Hill was a
semicircular cove, or recess, in which two people might stand. Here
was a slit, into which letters were dropped, and an "inquiry" window;
and this was all. There were seven other receiving houses in the town,
which were as follows: Mr. Hewitt, Hagley Row; Mr. E. Gunn, 1,
Kenion Street; Mr. W. Drury, 30, Lancaster Street; Mr. Ash, Prospect
Row; Mr. White, 235, Bristol Street; Miss Davis, Sand Pits; and Mrs.
Wood, 172, High Street, Deritend. Two deliveries took place daily--one
at 8 a.m., the other at 5 p.m. The postage of a "single" letter to London
then was ninepence; but a second piece of paper, however small, even
the half of a bank note, made it a "double" letter, the postage of which
was eighteenpence.
Between Needless Alley and the house now occupied by Messrs. Reece
and Harris, as offices, were three old-fashioned and rather dingy
looking shops, of which I can tell a curious story. Rather more than
twenty years ago, the late Mr. Samuel Haines acquired the lease of
these three houses, which had a few years to run. The freehold
belonged to the Grammar School. Mr. Haines proposed to Messrs.
Whateley, the solicitors for the school, that the old lease should be
cancelled; that they should grant him a fresh one at a greatly increased
rental; and that he should pull down the old places and erect good and
substantial houses on the site. This was agreed to; but when the details
came to be settled, some dispute arose, and the negotiations were near
going off. Mr. Haines, however, one day happened to go over the
original lease--nearly a hundred years old--to see what the covenants
were, and he found that he was bound to deliver up the plot of land in
question to the school, somewhere, I think, about 1860 to 1865, "well
cropped with potatoes." This discovery removed the difficulty, the
lease was granted, and the potato-garden is the site of the fine pile
known as Brunswick Buildings, upon each house of which Mr. Haines's
monogram, "S.H.," appears in an ornamental scroll.
The Town Hall had been opened three years. The Paradise Street front
was finished, and the two sides were complete for about three-fourths
of their length; but that portion where the double rows of columns stand,

and the pediment fronting Ratcliff Place, had not been built. The whole
of that end was then red brick. Prom the corner of Edmund Street a row
of beggarly houses, standing on a bank some eight feet above the level
of the road, reached to within a few yards of the hall itself, the space
between them and the hall being enclosed by a high wall. On the other
side, the houses in Paradise Street came to within about the same
distance, and the intervening space was carefully enclosed. The interior
of the hall was lighted by some elaborate bronzed brackets, projecting
from the side, between the windows. They were modelled in imitation
of vegetable forms; and at the ends, curving upwards, small branches
stood in a group, like the fingers of a half-opened human hand. Each of
these branchlets was a gas burner, which was covered by a
semi-opaque glass globe, the intent being, evidently, to suggest a
cluster of growing fruits. Some of the same pattern were placed in the
Church of the Saviour when it was first opened, but they, as well as
those at the Town Hall, were in a few years removed, greatly to the
relief of many who thought them inexpressibly ugly.
Nearly opposite the Town Hall was a lame attempt to convert an ugly
chapel into a Grecian temple. It was a wretched architectural failure. It
was "The School of Medicine," and, as I know from a personal visit at
the time, contained, even then, a very various and most extensive
collection of anatomical preparations, and other matters connected with
the noble profession to whose use it was dedicated. From the Town
Hall to Easy Row the pathway was three or four feet higher than the
road, and an ugly iron fence was there, to prevent passengers from
tumbling over. On this elevated walk stood the offices of a celebrated
character, "Old"--for I never heard him called by any other name--"Old
Spurrier," the hard, unbending, crafty lawyer, who, being permanently
retained by the Mint to prosecute all coiners in the district, had a busy
time of it, and gained for himself a large fortune and an evil reputation.
Bennetts Hill was considered the street of the town, architecturally. The
Norwich Union Office then held aloft the same lady, who, long
neglected, looks now as if her