What was here?
Before Madin’s library and the Paradise scheme, Mason Science College stood here: a tall Gothic building by J. A. Cossins on Edmund Street, next to the Victorian Reference Library and behind the Chamberlain Memorial.
History
Josiah Mason made his fortune in Birmingham’s metal trades and spent much of it on education. He founded his science college in 1875, the University of Birmingham records, and the building in Edmund Street opened in 1880. The Victoria County History credits it to J. A. Cossins and dates it 1875–80.
A Gothic home for science
Cossins gave Mason a building that looked like a college. The VCH notes that in Birmingham at the time Gothic “was considered appropriate for buildings with any educational function”, and singles out Mason’s College as a notable example. It stood on Edmund Street beside the Reference Library; in John Ball’s 1964 photograph of Chamberlain Square it rises behind the Chamberlain Memorial.
Mason’s college grew into something much bigger. In 1900 it became part of the new University of Birmingham, and the Edmund Street building stayed in university use until 1961.
In the way of the civic centre
By then the ground around it was wanted. The council had dreamed of a grand civic centre since the 1920s, and Peter Larkham and David Adams show that in 1959 a site for a new central library was identified as part of a revised scheme. On 13 August 1963 the City Engineer and Surveyor’s Department photographed demolition beginning in Great Charles Street for the new library. The site became vacant in 1964.
The university’s plaque is precise. The college, it says, “was demolished in 1964 to make way for the City of Birmingham Library”.
A library over a road
The library that replaced it was not simply a building on a square. Larkham and Adams describe it as sitting “above a key nexus of the road infrastructure”, with the Paradise Circus tunnels of the Inner Ring Road running underneath and a bus station designed into its base. Its details were apparently approved, they write, “so the Inner Ring Road could be built”. John Madin’s inverted ziggurat opened in 1974.
The same spot, then and now
1888–1913
Today
Old map: Ordnance Survey six-inch, reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland (CC BY 4.0). Today: © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Not every stone went at once. In 1969 John Ball photographed an archway that he described as “one of the last remaining traces of the former Josiah Mason College building”, with Baskerville House visible through it. Four carved heraldic shields from the college were saved and now hang on the university campus at Edgbaston, the last of Mason’s building still in the hands of the institution it started.
What happened here?
Then Mason Science College (J. A. Cossins, 1875–80), founded by Josiah Mason, part of the University of Birmingham from 1900 until 1961.
What happened Demolition for the new library began nearby in 1963; the college was demolished in 1964, with a fragment still standing in 1969.
Why Birmingham Corporation cleared the site for the new Central Library, the centrepiece of the Paradise Circus civic scheme, which was designed together with the Inner Ring Road tunnels beneath it.
What replaced it John Madin’s Central Library (opened 1974), itself demolished in 2015–16.
Now The Paradise development: One Chamberlain Square and the rebuilt Chamberlain Square.
Why it mattered
Mason College was the seed of the University of Birmingham. It stood at the heart of Chamberlain’s civic Birmingham, and its loss for a library-over-a-ring-road shows how the 1960s city chose road engineering and new civic monuments over the Victorian ones.
Why it disappeared
Redevelopment · Road building
Birmingham Corporation demolished it in 1964 to make way for the new Central Library (University of Birmingham plaque). The library site was chosen in 1959, cleared from 1963 and vacant in 1964 (Larkham and Adams); the library was built over the Paradise Circus tunnels of the Inner Ring Road and its details were approved “so the Inner Ring Road could be built” (Larkham and Adams).
More pictures
Birmingham Central Library from Chamberlain Square, 13 February 2010Elliott Brown, 13 February 2010. Flickr via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0
Mason College, on today’s streets
What’s there now
What replaced it
John Madin’s Central Library, begun in 1969 and opened in January 1974, built above the Paradise Circus ring-road tunnels. After its demolition in 2015–16 the site became part of the Paradise development, beginning with One Chamberlain Square.
What survives
Four carved heraldic shields from the college, now on the covered walkway next to the Law Building, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston. A last archway was photographed in 1969 but is not known to survive.
Today
The site is within the Paradise development on the north side of Chamberlain Square, around One Chamberlain Square.
Then and now
Then · 1880
Now · 6 August 2022
Key dates
- 23 February 1875 — Mason lays the first stone of his science collegeOn his 80th birthday Josiah Mason laid the first stone of his science college in Edmund Street, founded to teach science for the manufactures of the Midlands. It opened in 1880.
- 1880 — Mason Science College opensJosiah Mason’s science college opens in Edmund Street, in a Gothic building by J. A. Cossins. In 1900 it becomes part of the University of Birmingham.
- 24 March 1900 — Mason’s college becomes the University of BirminghamMason University College, as Mason’s college had become in 1898, was turned into the University of Birmingham by royal charter, after a campaign led by Joseph Chamberlain.
- 13 August 1963 — Demolition begins for the new libraryThe City Engineer and Surveyor’s Department photographs demolition beginning in Great Charles Street for the new Central Library at Paradise Circus.
Sources and further reading
Demolition date: the University of Birmingham gives 1964; some secondary sites give 1962. John Ball’s 1969 photograph shows a fragment still standing, so the main building went in 1964 but clearance was not complete until later.
The college opened on 1 October 1880, the date given by Mason’s biographer J. T. Bunce (1882) and the Dictionary of National Biography; the University gives 1880 for the building and 1875 for the foundation.
Classification: the college stood on the library site, not in the road line itself. It is classed with the ring road because Larkham and Adams show the library and the Paradise Circus tunnels were planned and approved as one scheme. Manzoni retired as City Engineer in 1963, so the demolition came just after his tenure, under schemes his department had helped shape.
- Mason College Heraldic Shields — University of Birmingham
- A History of the County of Warwick, vol. 7: The City of Birmingham — Secular Architecture, pp. 43–57 — W. B. Stephens (ed.), Victoria County History, 1964. pp. 43–57
- The Un-necessary Monument? The Origins, Impact and Potential Conservation of Birmingham Central Library — Peter J. Larkham and David Adams, Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society 60, 2016. pp. 98–105
- Founding of the West Midlands Group in 1967 — The Victorian Society, The Victorian Society
- Photographs by John Ball (Birmingham, 1959–1969) — John Ball, Wikimedia Commons (from jlb2011.co.uk)
- Josiah Mason: a biography — John Thackray Bunce, Simpkin, Marshall & Co.; Cornish Brothers, Birmingham, 1882
- Mason, Sir Josiah — Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 36 — George Clement Boase, Smith, Elder & Co., 1893
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