Hockley

A court in Hampton Street, near St George's Church (now demolished). The front houses have been demolished. Photograph taken in 1963 by Phyllis Nicklin - See Acknowledgements, Keith Berry.

The district of Hockley straddles Icknield Street; the part east of that road is generally now referred to as the Jewellery Quarter.

The location of the original settlement of Hockley is unknown, although a moated site was still visible in the 18th century prior to building at Warstone Lane/ Vyse Street. This is likely to have been Sir Thomas de Birmingham's 'castle' which was recorded c1390 as being at 'Warstone near the Sandpits. (See Warstone.) This may have been the development of an existing site, in which case it could date back to Anglo-Saxon times, or it may not. Alternatively the settlement of Hockley may originally have lain around Hockley Hill.

 
The name is certainly medieval, and may derive from Hocca's leah, 'Hocca's clearing'. The placename element, leah is interesting here. Leahs, 'clearings' are usually found in eastern districts of Birmingham where the heavy clay soil is given naturally to dense oak forest. Here, incoming settlers had to find existing cleared land on which to farm, or to painstakingly create their own. However, the underlying geology on the Hockley side of Birmingham is sand and pebbles, which is not given to dense tree cover. It is not obvious why Hocca's settlement was described as a clearing? It is also suggested that the name derives not from Hocca's leah, but from Hocca's lowe, the latter element meaning 'hill' or mound', which seems to better fit the topography of Hockley.

However, there are five other places called Hockley in Warwickshire alone, so it is also possible that the name was import by a landowner of a later period.

The Wednesbury Turnpike was set up in 1727 and created largely as a new through-road via existing village tracks. It left Birmingham from Bull Street and Snow Hill via Constitution Hill, Great Hampton Street and Hockley Hill, before ascending Soho Hill to what is now the Holyhead Road. At the bottom of Constitution Hill and at Villa Road were tollgates and keeper's cottages which operated until the road was disturnpiked in 1870. In 1801 the road was improved as part of the London-Holyhead Mail Road. Thomas Telford raised the level of the road across the valley of Hockley Brook where Hockley Flyover now stands and reduced the height and gradient of Soho Hill.

The urban expansion from the town towards Hockley began with the development the Colmore family's New Hall estate. The hall stood at the present junction of Newhall Street with Great Charles Street Queensway and was surrounded by an extensive park.

St Paul's, the Jewellers' Church

Well worth a visit - St Paul's Church.
The Colmore family gave a hectare of land and £1000 towards the building costs for St Paul's Church. Built from 1777 this is one of Birmingham's few surviving neo-classical designs and is said to be a scaled-down version of St Martin-in-the-Fields in London's Trafalgar Square. The aim was to stimulate demand for this high-class housing development on the rural edge of the crowded town.

At this time most of the pews at St Martin's and St Philip's were let. It was extremely difficult for newcomers, however wealthy, to rent a pew. The alternative was to sit in the few free pews at the back reserved for the poor. A new housing estate with a church whose pews could be purchased was a great incentive to prospective purchasers and gave impetus to sale of plots. St Paul's is now known for its proximity to the Jewellery Quarter as 'The Jewellers' Church'.

For fifty years St Paul's was a highly fashionable church in the midst of an expensive property development. However, as Birmingham's population boomed and industry thrived, the surrounding area became industrialised with poor overcrowded housing. The status of the area continued to decline and the fabric of the church building with it. After being damaged by German bombs during the Second World War there was every prospect that the church might close.

However, the life of the parish was revitalised by a vision of the church as the centre of Birmingham's industrial community. The building itself was extensively restored 1985-1994 and is now a Grade I Listed building at the centre of St Paul's Conservation Area, now consolidated as the Jewellery Quarter Conservation Area.

In 1834 most of Hockley was still a rural area on the western fringe of Birmingham, urban only as far west as Summer Hill Road and as far north as Warstone Lane. However, by 1850 it had been built up from the town centre as far as Hockley Brook, which was the boundary with Aston. And by 1881 the Aston side of the brook was also completely urban with Hockley itself completely built up with working-class housing and industry and encircled by similar urban districts.

Well worth a visit - Key Hill Conservation Area
Key Hill Conservation Area is now consolidated within the Jewellery Quarter Conservation Area. This now covers the area bounded by Great Charles Street Queensway, Constitution Hill and Barr Street, Icknield Street, Summer Hill Road and Sandpits. Some Listed buildings here are good examples of simple domestic architecture, for example, early 19th-century terraced houses on Hockley Hill. There are a number of Listed public houses here including the Jewellers Arms c1840 with its carriage arch. Some examples are of grander origin: on Warstone Lane a neo-classical three-storey house with Doric pilasters, was built as a private residence c1835. In 1880 a workshop was built to the rear and the premises were then used industrially. The rest of the garden was built on in 1897, a development typical of the Jewellery Quarter. The building is now the headquarters of the British Jewellers Federation. There are also some large purpose-built factories in the district, good examples of 19th-century industrial architecture:

The Argent Centre

Well worth a look - Gillott's Manufactory.
At the junction of Vittoria Street and Graham Street the Victoria Works, Gillott's Manufactory was built in 1838 around a central courtyard. It is an important building as an early example, certainly the earliest in the Jewellery Quarter, of a purpose-built factory. Here the world's first mass-produced steel pen nibs were made, so too Joseph Gillott's fortune.

Coming from Sheffield to Birmingham in search of work during the post-war slump after Waterloo, Gillott found work at a buckle factory. His fiancée's brothers were in the pen-making business; each pen was made individually and the quality and thickness of their nibs was inconsistent. Gillott applied the mass-production system he had seen in buckle-making to pen-making initially in his attic in Cornwall Street, then in Church Street, Newhall Street and finally in Graham Street where he had built his own factory employing over five hundred workers by 1870.

Birmingham in the mid-19th century became the pen capital of the world with twelve factories employing some 2500 workers. A semi-circular pediment with a relief bust of Queen Victoria facing Graham Street commemorates the queen's Golden Jubilee in 1887. The firm left the site for a purpose-built factory near Dudley in 1956. The building was restored and now comprises offices and apartments.

The Argent Centre
At the corner of Frederick Street and Legge Lane the Argent Centre is a striking building in renaissance florentine style in polychromatic brick with round arches and italianate towers. Built in 1862, it was probably Birmingham's first flatted factory. 250 workers were employed here manufacturing pens. On the upper floor was a luxurious Turkish baths heated by excess steam from the factory below. Also available were facilities for billiards, chess and fencing. The construction of the building was innovative in that the floors were built using hollow bricks to reduce weight and fastened with iron ties to lessen the fire risk.

The Birmingham Mint

Take a look at the Birmingham Mint.
On Icknield Street the Birmingham Mint was built by Ralph Heaton II who bought the Soho Manufactory minting machinery from Matthew Boulton at auction and began minting British and foreign coins from 1862, the largest independent mint in the world. Ralph Heaton III built up the Mint to a greater capacity than the Royal Mint in London. In the late 1890s the Mint was producing over 100 million coins annually for Russia alone. As the IMI Birmingham Mint it was one of the foremost coin producers in the world had the longest history of any independent mint. It was saved from extinction by diversification after the Second World War into button, badge- and medal-making, pressing, die-making, and electro-precision work. The Mint went bankrupt in 2003 and the medal-making business continued by JFT Law Ltd and Stirchley Machine Tools Ltd. Although surrounding buildings have been demolished, the main block still stands and the site is to be redeveloped.

Mount Zion Chapel

Take a look at the Ramgharia Gurdwara.
On Graham Street opposite Vittoria Street is a chapel which reflects some of Birmingham's social and ethnic changes. Built with seats for 1000 people, it is neo-classical in style with a pedimented porch and round-arched windows and was built in 1844 as Highbury Chapel, soon becoming St Andrew's Scotch Presbyterian Church. It became an Independent Chapel, Mount Zion Baptist Chapel, and a Methodist New Connexion chapel by 1879. In 1930 it was Birmingham's first Elim Pentecostal Tabernacle until that church moved to a new building on the corner of Newhall Hill in 1970. From that date it became a Sikh temple, the Ramgharia Gurdwara. The new Elim Tabernacle building now also belongs to the gurdwara.

The hill on which much of Hockley stands is made up of soft sandstone. It was possible to quarry it by spade and was discovered by local foundries to be ideal for use as a moulding material. There was a large quarry in George Street on the southern side of the hill conveniently close to the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal. And on the north-western slopes were more sandpits. Their extent can still be seen as a great gouge in the hillside where the General and Church of England cemeteries were laid out in 1836 and 1848 respectively.

Take a look at the General Cemetery.
Opened in 1836 by the Birmingham General Cemetery Company at Key Hill, at that time on the edge of the built-up area of the town, this was Birmingham's first public cemetery and was designed to cater for people who did not want an Anglican burial. Among the non-conformist Birmingham notables buried here are Joseph Chamberlain and George Dawson. The mortuary chapel, which resembled a small classical temple in the Greek Doric order, was demolished in 1966. The gates, gate piers and railings in Icknield Street are statutorily listed as Grade II. The cemetery, which was taken over by the City in 1952, is Grade II Listed in the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Historic Interest and forms part of Key Hill Conservation Area.

Take a look at the Church of England Cemetery.
Nearby, off Warstone Lane, is the Church of England Cemetery which was opened twelve years later by the Birmingham Church of England Cemetery Company on a former sandpit site. The catacombs were designed by James Hamilton as was the cemetery lodge, now a Grade II Listed building and currently in use as offices. St Michael & All Angels, also designed by Hamilton, was consecrated in 1848 and stood directly between the catacombs and Vyse Street. However, it closed as a church a few years later reopening in 1869 as the cemetery chapel. The building was badly damaged by bombs during World War 2 and was demolished in 1953.

The City took over the cemetery 1952 and the former Key Hill Methodist chapel was then used as a non-denominational cemetery chapel. The cemetery was closed for burials in 1982. An unusual occupant is the famous Birmingham printer, John Baskerville who had requested to be buried with no religious ceremony in his own back garden, now the site of Baskerville House in Centenary Square. His remains were transferred from there to the catacombs of Christ Church at the top of New Street and reburied here after Christ Church was demolished in 1898.

Take a look at the Chamberlain Clock.
Set in the middle of the Warstone Lane/ Vyse Street junction at the centre of the Jewellery Quarter, the Chamberlain Clock of 1903 is a tribute to Joseph Chamberlain's services to South Africa; Chamberlain was the area's Member of Parliament for many years. The clock was paid for by public subscription and unveiled by his wife in 1904. Originally clockwork and hand-wound it was later converted to electricity, but did not chime for many years. Having fallen into disrepair it was restored in 1989 as part of the revitalisation of the Jewellery Quarter; a new chiming bell was installed, the lamp brackets replaced and the structure repainted. It serves as a handsome focal point for the district.

The Birmingham, Wolverhampton & Dudley Railway line of 1854 became the Great Western's line from Birmingham Snow Hill to Wolverhampton Low Level Station. By 1968 this was last line running from Snow Hill; it closed in 1972. In 1995 the line was reopened from a rebuilt Snow Hill to carry the Midland Metro trams. The line runs to St Paul's Metro Station built in 1999 in Livery Street, 125m through Hockley No.1 Tunnel under Livery Street and Northwood Street, after Kenyon Street bridge it enters Hockley No.2 Tunnel running 148m under Hall Street, Branston Street, Spencer Street, Northampton Street and Vyse Street to the Jewellery Quarter Station which opened in 1995. Crossing Icknield Street on a steel viaduct it passes the site of Hockley Station which opened with the railway in 1854 and which closed with Snow Hill Station in 1972. Opposite Hockley Station was Hockley Goods Station. This ran the length of Pitsford Street and had a branch line to the rail-canal interchange at Hockley Port on the Birmingham Canal Navigations between Brookfield Road and Lodge Road.

On 20 May 1872 the first horse-tram line in the Midlands was opened by Birmingham & District Tramways. The line ran from the Birmingham boundary at Hockley Brook (Hockley Flyover) along the Soho Road/ Holyhead Road through Handsworth to West Bromwich. Twelve crimson and cream open-topped double-decked horse-drawn cars ran on single-track lines. In 1888 the route was converted to an underground cable traction system because of the steep climb up Hockley Hill; the depot was at Whitmore Street, off Hockley Hill. By 1906 all Birmingham lines were electrified with overhead cables. Most of the system was closed down soon after World War 2; the tram station is now a bus depot.

St George's Church (now demolished) from Beilby, Knott & Beilby 1830 An Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Birmingham, a work now in the public domain.

Consecrated in 1822, the architect of St George's Hockley was Birmingham-based Thomas Rickman. This was a most important building, the first in Birmingham of a wave of government-funded churches known as Commissioners' churches; the growth of the urban population in the nineteenth century led to steady decline in church attendance and many believed to a decline in morals and increasing lawlessness. Most importantly this was one of the first real attempts anywhere in England at reviving gothic church architecture. To later purists it suffered from having galleries and its columns were thin, but it was built in stone in accurate decorated gothic style. It had innovative cast iron tracery in the windows. When it was built, there were so few houses near Great Hampton Row and Tower Street, that the church was nicknamed ‘St' George's in the Fields.' The building was enlarged in 1884. It was demolished in 1960 as part of the wholesale redevelopment of the area.

The churchyard was used for burials as soon as the church opened; it was closed in 1873 and laid out as a garden in 1912. The churchyard gates and Thomas Rickman's tomb still stand and are Grade II Listed. Rickman was laid to rest here in the grounds of what his friends believed to be his best work. His monument is a pointed canopied arch designed by his architectural partner R C Hussey 1845 in sandstone, which has worn badly. The site is now part of St George's Park.

Click to enlarge the images in the Hockley Gallery below.