King Edward’s School, New Street

History

A school on the guild’s land

King Edward’s School had been on New Street since its charter of 2 January 1552, when it moved into the old hall of the Guild of the Holy Cross. In the early 1830s the governors decided to rebuild. An Act of Parliament of 1831 let them spend up to £50,000 on new buildings. The old school was cleared, and for a while the boys were taught in the Shakespeare Rooms, further along New Street.

Barry wins

On 18 February 1833 the result of the design competition was announced. More than sixty designs had come in, most of them Gothic. The first premium of £100 went to Charles Barry, with Hayward of Bath second and Godwin third.

Barry gave Birmingham something it had never seen in its streets: a stone front in the late Perpendicular Gothic of Tudor England, 174 feet long and 60 feet high. Eight buttresses divided it and rose above an embattled parapet as pinnacles, carved with the crown, the rose and the portcullis. At each end a wing stepped forward with an oriel window two storeys high. In the centre was a richly carved porch. Behind the very tall upper windows were two great schoolrooms, joined by a vaulted corridor and set around two inner courts. Showell gives the main schoolroom as 120 feet long and 45 feet high, under an open timber roof carved with tracery.

The same spot, then and now

1888–1913

Today

Barry wanted more: a clock tower at one end and a lantern in the middle. Neither was built. His son Alfred later wrote of “the flatness of the skyline”, although the engraving in his 1867 book still shows the lantern.

Where Barry met Pugin

In 1835, while the school was going up, Barry met the young Augustus Welby Pugin, who designed “certain details of the interior” for him. It was the start of the partnership that would build the Houses of Parliament. A carver on the job, John Thomas, caught Barry’s eye here too, and went on to work at Westminster.

People saw the link at once. In October 1837 Godwin, surveying the state of architecture in the provinces, called the nearly finished school “not merely an ornament to Birmingham but to England”, and “a fair evidence of the skill with which that gentleman will carry out his beautiful designs for the Houses of Parliament”. The Victoria County History agrees: its rows of pinnacled buttresses foreshadow Westminster. It also says the building “caused a considerable stir” and influenced Queen’s College in Paradise Street, built in 1843–45.

A school that kept growing

The school had moved in by early 1838. Showell put the cost at £67,000. Under the reforms of the 1830s the foundation grew from about 100 children to nearly 1,500, as it opened elementary schools in Gem Street, Meriden Street, Edward Street and Pigott Street. The British Association met in the building’s rooms in 1839. Before 1867 E. M. Barry, Charles Barry’s son, added more class rooms. From 1893 the Girls’ High School was taught in the hall, until its own building opened next door in 1896.

Out to Edgbaston

By the 1930s the school had outgrown its town-centre plot. In 1936 it moved to a 50-acre site on Edgbaston Park Road, and Barry’s building was demolished the same year.

One piece was saved. The vaulted upper corridor that had joined the two great schoolrooms was taken down and rebuilt at Edgbaston in 1938–40 by Holland W. Hobbiss, as the school chapel, with much of its original stained glass. Barry’s school has gone from New Street, but its pupils still gather under the vault that once linked his two great rooms.

Why it disappeared

Redevelopment

The school outgrew Barry’s building on its cramped New Street plot. In 1936 it moved to a 50-acre site at Edgbaston, and the New Street building was demolished that year. The valuable site was rebuilt with offices, shops and a cinema.