What was here?
A landscaped sunken roundabout above the St Chad’s underpass, reached by subways, where Snow Hill Queensway met the ring road.
History
The ring road here took the line of Bath Street, and Pugin’s Bishop’s House opposite St Chad’s Cathedral was demolished for it around 1959–60.
The circus had two large mosaics by Kenneth Budd. The John F. Kennedy memorial, paid for by Birmingham’s Irish community, was unveiled on 8 July 1968 by the Irish ambassador. The Snow Hill mural, 300 feet long and commissioned by the Public Works Department for £30,000, was unveiled on 14 July 1969. Keith Jordan thought St Chad’s “the best of Birmingham’s interchanges”. A photograph of January 1977 shows the circus with Snow Hill station being demolished beyond.
Why it mattered
It was the most carefully landscaped of the ring-road junctions, and its fate shows how the city later chose street-level crossings over subways.
Why it disappeared
Redevelopment
In 2006 Jordan reported plans to remove the St Chad’s complex as part of the Snow Hill redevelopment. The subways were later filled and the junction rebuilt at street level.
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.
What’s there now
What replaced it
A street-level junction beside the Snowhill office development.
What survives
The A38 St Chad’s tunnel beneath, which still carries through traffic.
Today
Street-level crossings between St Chad’s Cathedral and Snowhill.
Then and now
Then · January 1977
Now · 29 March 2013
Key dates
- 20 July 2013 — Ring road tunnels shut for repairsThe A38 St Chad’s and Queensway tunnels, the main surviving parts of the ring road, close for six weeks of essential repairs.
Sources and further reading
Wikipedia (citing the Birmingham Post, not read) says one carriageway of the St Chad’s underpass opened on 27 May 1968 and the other in November 1969, and that the underpasses were removed in early 2008; these dates are unconfirmed. What happened to the two mosaics is not covered here.
- The Inner Ring Road, Underpasses & Murals of Birmingham — Keith M. Jordan, Sutton Coldfield Local History Research Group, 2006. pp. 31–40
- Birmingham — Metropolitan Cathedral of St Chad — Taking Stock (Catholic Church heritage survey with Historic England)
- The history behind Birmingham’s St Chad’s and Queensway tunnels — BBC News, BBC, 2013
- Queensway, Birmingham — Wikipedia — Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia
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