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BIRMINGHAM
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the
English West Midlands. Birmingham is the largest of
England's core cities, and is generally considered to be
the UK's second city. The city's reputation was forged
as the powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution in
Britain, a fact which led to Birmingham being known as "the
workshop of the world" or the "city of a thousand trades".
The City of Birmingham has a population of 992,400 (2004
estimate) [1]. It forms part of the larger West Midlands
conurbation, which has a population of 2,284,093 (2001
census) and includes several neighbouring towns and
cities, such as Solihull, Wolverhampton and the towns of
the Black Country.
The people of Birmingham are known as 'Brummies', a term
derived from the city's nickname of Brum. This comes in
turn from the city's dialect name, Brummagem. There is a
distinctive Brummie dialect and accent.
Birmingham is an ethnically and culturally diverse city.
Around 30% of Birmingham's population is of non-white
ethnicity; at the time of the 2001 census, 70.4% of the
population was White (including 3.2% Irish), 19.5% Asian
or Asian British, 6.1% Black or Black British, 0.5%
Chinese, and 3.5% of mixed or other ethnic heritage
Although Birmingham has existed as a settlement for over
a thousand years, today's city is overwhelmingly a
product of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, as the
real growth of the city began with the Industrial
Revolution. Consequently, relatively few buildings
survive from its earlier history.
Traces of medieval Birmingham can be seen in the oldest
churches, notably the original parish church, St Martin
in the Bull Ring, where a church has stood since at
least the 12th century. The current church (begun around
1290) was extensively re-built in the 1870s, retaining
some original walls and foundations. A few other
buildings from the medieval and Tudor periods survive,
among them The Old Crown public house in Digbeth, the
15th century Saracen's Head public house and Old Grammar
School in Kings Norton and Blakesley Hall in Yardley.
The city grew rapidly from Georgian times and a number
of buildings survive from this period. Among them are St
Philip's Cathedral, originally built as a parish church,
St Paul's Church in the largely Georgian St Paul's
Square, Soho House in Handsworth, the home of Matthew
Boulton, Perrott's Folly in Ladywood (which is said to
have later inspired J. R. R. Tolkien), and the Town
Hall.
The Victorian era saw extensive building across the city.
Major public buildings such as the Law Courts, the
Council House (see picture) and the Museum & Art Gallery
were constructed, many under the auspices of Joseph
Chamberlain's reforming mayoralty. Saint Chad's
Cathedral, built in 1839 by Augustus Pugin, was the
first Roman Catholic Cathedral to be built in the UK
since the Reformation. The characteristic materials of
Victorian Birmingham are red brick and terracotta, and
many fine Victorian buildings have been retained on New
Street and Corporation Street in the city centre. Across
the city, the need to house the industrial workers gave
rise to miles of redbrick streets and terraces, many of
back-to-back houses, some of which were later to become
inner-city slums.
Continued population growth in the interwar period, saw
vast estates of semi-detached houses being built on
greenfield land in outlying parts of the city such as
Kingstanding and Weoley Castle, but the coming of World
War II and the Blitz claimed many lives and many
beautiful buildings too. However, the destruction that
took place in post-war Birmingham was also extensive:
dozens of fine Victorian buildings like the intricate
glass-roofed Birmingham New Street Station, and the old
Central Library, were razed in the 1950s and 1960s and
replaced with modernist concrete buildings. In inner-city
areas too, much Victorian housing was redeveloped and
existing communities were relocated to tower block
estates like Castle Vale.
The planning decisions of the post-war years were to
have a profound effect on the image of Birmingham in
subsequent decades, with the mix of ring roads, shopping
malls and tower blocks often referred to as a 'concrete
jungle'. In more recent years, Birmingham has learnt
from what many see as the mistakes of the 1960s and
instituted the largest tower block demolition and
renovation programmes anywhere in Europe. There has been
a lot of new building in the city centre in recent years,
including the award-winning Future Systems' Selfridges
building, an irregularly-shaped structure covered in
thousands of reflective discs (see picture), the
Brindleyplace development and the Millennium Point
science and technology centre. Some fine architects hail
from the city such as Glenn Howells and Ken Shuttleworth. |
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