What was here?
Between the Midland Institute and Mason College stood the Central Library: a classical front to Ratcliff Place matching the Institute next door, and behind it J. H. Chamberlain’s great Reference Library reading room, curving round into Edmund Street.
History
In 1865 Birmingham opened a new Central Library in Ratcliff Place, beside the Midland Institute. The Victoria County History notes that it was given a façade to match E. M. Barry’s Institute next door. It was a statement of what Birmingham’s civic gospel was about: books, free to all, at the heart of the town.
Fire
In January 1879 it burnt down. A contemporary engraving shows the gutted shell, with Mason’s new college visible through the ruin. The VCH records that after “the great fire of 1879” the front was restored on the old lines, while the extension in Edmund Street and “the highly-original interior of the reference library (both opened in 1882) were carried out by Martin and Chamberlain”. The Library of Birmingham’s archivists put it simply: the building “was rebuilt on the existing site in 1882”.
J. H. Chamberlain’s reading room was its glory: iron, glass and galleries of books. His Shakespeare Memorial Room, panelled and carved, held the library’s Shakespeare collection.
Ninety years
The library worked for nearly ninety years. But Larkham and Adams found that as early as 1938 the council had resolved that a replacement was “an urgent necessity”. After the war that replacement was folded into the planning of Paradise Circus. The new library was designed to sit over the ring-road tunnels, and its details were approved, the same authors write, “so the Inner Ring Road could be built”.
In June 1973 a photographer caught the two buildings side by side: the white bulk of Madin’s new library and the brown Victorian one beside it, “slowly being surrounded by the concrete structures so popular at the time”. The new library opened in January 1974. The old one, D. J. Norton records, “was demolished in October 1974”.
What was saved
Two pieces of the old building escaped. Chamberlain’s Shakespeare Memorial Room was dismantled and rebuilt, first in the School of Music and then at the top of the Library of Birmingham. And the stretch of Edmund Street the library curved into simply ceased to exist, absorbed into the new civic layout.
There is a twist. The library that replaced it was itself demolished in 2015–16.
What happened here?
Then The Central Library (1865), rebuilt after the 1879 fire with Martin and Chamberlain’s reference library (1882), at Ratcliff Place and Edmund Street.
What happened Replaced by John Madin’s new Central Library in January 1974; demolished in October 1974.
Why Birmingham Corporation had wanted a new library since 1938; the replacement was built as part of the Paradise Circus civic scheme, designed over the Inner Ring Road tunnels, and the old building was then cleared.
What replaced it Madin’s Central Library and the remodelled civic layout around Paradise Circus and Chamberlain Square.
Now The Paradise development and the rebuilt Chamberlain Square, reopened in 2021.
Why it mattered
The Free Library was the civic gospel made solid: public books for a working town, rebuilt within three years of a disastrous fire. Chamberlain’s reading room was one of the great Victorian interiors of the city. Its loss in 1974 came at the very end of the ring-road era, and the building that replaced it lasted only forty years.
Why it disappeared
Redevelopment · Road building
Birmingham Corporation replaced it with John Madin’s new Central Library, part of the Paradise Circus civic scheme built over the Inner Ring Road tunnels (Larkham and Adams: “the project required the demolition of the familiar late-Victorian library”). The old building was demolished in October 1974 (D. J. Norton).
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.
More pictures
Birmingham Central Library from Chamberlain Square, 13 February 2010Elliott Brown, 13 February 2010. Flickr via Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0
The Victorian Central Library, on today’s streets
What’s there now
What replaced it
John Madin’s Central Library (opened January 1974) and the remodelled civic layout around Paradise Circus; Edmund Street’s western end disappeared in the early 1970s. Madin’s library was demolished in 2015–16 for the Paradise development.
What survives
J. H. Chamberlain’s Shakespeare Memorial Room, dismantled in 1974, rebuilt in the School of Music and now installed at the top of the Library of Birmingham.
Today
The site lies within the Paradise development, beside the Town Hall and the rebuilt Chamberlain Square.
Then and now
Then · January 1879
Now · 2 May 2021
Key dates
- January 1879 — Central Library burnsFire guts Birmingham’s Central Library in Ratcliff Place. It is rebuilt on the same site, with Martin and Chamberlain’s reference library, and reopens in 1882.
Sources and further reading
Opening of the new library: the Iron Room gives 1973; Larkham and Adams give January 1974, opened by Harold Wilson. The text says January 1974.
The exact day of the 1879 fire (often given as 11 January) is not used; the engraving on Commons is dated simply January 1879.
The October 1974 demolition date comes from D. J. Norton’s local photographic site, consistent with the Birmingham City Council account (read only as a search summary) that the Shakespeare Memorial Room was saved when the old library was demolished in 1974.
Classification: the library was not in the line of the road. It is classed with the ring road because its replacement was planned and approved as part of the integrated Paradise Circus road-and-civic scheme. It came down eleven years after Manzoni retired.
- Birmingham’s Public Libraries — The Iron Room, Library of Birmingham, 2012
- Birmingham’s Victorian Central Library — D. J. Norton
- 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. 95–105
- Founding of the West Midlands Group in 1967 — The Victorian Society, The Victorian Society
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