Christ Church, New Street

History

A church with free seats

Birmingham was growing fast, and this church was meant for people who could not pay for a seat. In 1802–03 the executors of Isaac Hawkins offered £500, later £1,000, towards a church where the seats would be free. W. P. Inge gave the site, and an Act of Parliament followed in 1803.

The site was superb. Christ Church stood in the angle where Ann Street (later Colmore Row) met New Street, high above the road and reached by a wide flight of steps. A guide of 1830 called it “an elevated and commanding situation at the junction of six streets”.

Slow building

On 22 July 1805 the Earl of Dartmouth laid the first stone on behalf of George III, who was ill. The King gave £1,000. William Hollins had won the design competition in 1804, but the work was carried out by Charles Norton, a Birmingham builder and surveyor.

Then the money ran out. Work stopped, and a second Act was needed in 1810. Bishop James Cornwallis consecrated the church in July 1813, and the first service was held on Sunday 18 July. The steeple came later. The tower was finished in 1814, and the Handsworth mason John Richardson added the portico and spire in 1815–16, for £1,200 and £1,500. A clock with four dials followed. Dent puts the total cost at about £26,000.

The finished church had a portico of four Doric columns. Above it a square tower carried the clock, then an eight-sided belfry with a balustrade, then a plain eight-sided spire. An early design had a dome and cupola, copying St Philip’s nearby, and that version is shown on a medal struck in 1805. Critics were not kind. Dent called the result “a heavy, plain stone structure” with an “ugly spire”.

The Free Church

What mattered was inside. “The whole of the ground floor was used for free sittings, only the gallery being reserved, and for many years Christ Church was known as the ‘Free Church’,” says the Victoria County History. It held about 1,500 people. Men and women sat on opposite sides, which gave rise to a well-known local epigram.

The vaults below

Under the floor were massive stone vaults, divided into tiers of catacombs. One of them held a famous secret. In about 1829 the coffin of the printer John Baskerville, who had died in 1775, was quietly placed in a vault here. Nobody wrote it in the burial register. On 12 April 1893 it was found again in catacomb no. 521.

Following the people

Christ Church was given its own parish in 1865, but people were already moving out of the town centre. Between 1871 and 1896, by one account, the parish population fell from 6,636 to about 2,500. Under the Birmingham Churches Act of 1897 the church and its site were sold. In February 1898 around 600 bodies from the catacombs, Baskerville among them, were moved to the catacombs at Warstone Lane Cemetery. The church was demolished in 1899, and a block of shops and offices, Christ Church Buildings, went up on the site. That was demolished in turn in 1970.

The same spot, then and now

1888–1913

Today

The Free Church paid for its own successor. The money from the sale built St Agatha’s in Sparkbrook, out where the people had gone, and Christ Church’s foundation stone, font and bell went with it. They are still there.

Why it disappeared

Commercial redevelopment · Redevelopment

As the centre of Birmingham turned into shops and offices, the parish emptied. Under the Birmingham Churches Act of 1897 the building and its valuable site were sold, and the money went to build St Agatha’s, Sparkbrook. The catacombs were cleared in 1898 and the church was demolished in 1899.