Bill goes onto say,

 "I’ve been compiling this document for years now to show him the wealth of Birmingham history that’s (almost) staring him in the face. I hope he’s on the internet!"

Bill has in fact proved our ignorant friend very wrong with nearly a 1000 pages of extraordinary, valuable information.

Yes, it's strange how we all sometimes live in ignorance of our surroundings, history and culture. Being a Brummie myself I am well aware of the apathy of my fellow inhabitants towards this wonderful, suprising area. Do not be too hard on them through. Most have lived through the catastrophic architectural changes that made Birmingham a laughing stock in the sixties. Couple this with an accent which outsiders always associate with being thick, then throw in a few Birmingham screwdriver jokes and you have the recipe for extreme apathy!

The side panels on the left contains hyperlinked buttons to each relevant period of the work. (in preparation)

The following was written mainly for teachers but is very interesting for all of us and forms a good introduction to the work.

THE HISTORY OF BIRMINGHAM ON YOUR DOORSTEP by William Dargue 2003

AIMS

This History of Birmingham on your Doorstep is written initially as a resource for Birmingham schools. I have compiled it to support primary and secondary history teaching with the aim of encouraging and enabling local Birmingham history to be included in general history teaching. It is vital for children to know the history of their locality and how it fits into the broader picture.

There is history right under your feet, in your own backyard,
there is history on your Doorstep - or not very far away!

Wherever you stand in Birmingham, people have walked over that same spot for a quarter of a million years, and here is the evidence to prove it. Whatever history topic or period you cover there is local information here.

I am keen to give teachers the precise locations of evidence of past times. I want you to be able to take your children and their educated imaginations to the very place where a Stone Age hunter dropped his axe, to the exact riverside site where corn was ground for a thousand years, to the very place where steam transformed the industrial history of the world - and for the children to know that history happened right there where they are standing. And is there anything surviving that gives a clue to the past?

This resource will help you help children begin to explore
the two great historical themes of Change and Continuity
and it’s all on your Doorstep.


CONTENT & SOURCES
This document is not the result of primary research, but compiled from a wide variety of secondary sources. Information is presented chronologically for the most part, and in periods rather than centuries, though later periods and centuries are roughly concurrent. Periods are not exact and there is overlap. Local background information is given for each period often alongside a regional or national perspective.

In order for teachers to easily find out about their own locality GAZETTEERS form a major component: they list and detail archaeological and documentary evidence and surviving buildings and their locations. Gazetteers are in postcode order and give district and street names. Sites sometimes appear in more than one Gazetteer for the sake of completeness, typically multi-period sites. For this reason you should always search the whole document for a reference.

I include sizeable extracts of contemporary documentary evidence to show what people thought of Birmingham at the time.

This is a fairly large document, but it is somewhat deceptive. If you look up a reference relating to something about which you know, you will undoubtedly find the information is at best very concentrated, at worst minimal, and the whole somewhat sparsely populated. However, an advantage of an electronic document is that I shall be able to improve the work over time. In the end, of course, no history can possibly be exhaustive; and this one will serve best as a starting point for your further research. I therefore give guidance on where to find more information: in the extensive annotated BIBLIOGRAPHY almost every book and map listed is available at Birmingham Central Library Local Studies Department.

There is an increasing amount of information available from a host of websites. Where I have referred websites I have said so in the text, but I have not given the website address. It has been my experience that addresses change so frequently (including this one!) that they are of limited use. I recommend using your browser’s search facility to trace sites. See Websites.


Authors! - If your book isn’t listed here, my apologies.
Send me a copy - see FEEDBACK.


Readers are also constantly referred to the Birmingham Sites and Monuments Record, the BSMR, a computerised database kept by the City Planning Archaeologist and open to public access. For each archaeological find or site the BSMR gives details, street locations and Ordnance Survey grid references. Some items have extensive information, others are short, but most importantly, the original sources of the information are always given which allows further investigation. See BSMR.




CREATING YOUR OWN History of . . .

One way to use this material for school projects is to use your word processor’s Search or Find facility quoting either the postcode, district, street, period, topic or site in which you are interested. Always search the whole document: some sites are mentioned more than once with different details; occasionally sites may not be found in the period you expect, some topics reappear in later periods.
NOTE For easier searching, apostrophes are generally omitted in names (eg. Kings Heath, Bennetts Hill), except in church names (eg. St Martin’s).

Create your own document by copying relevant information; or copy the whole document, deleting material not relevant to you, and use the remaining text as a basis for your own work.


Finding out more . .

First:
A very good way to start local research is initially via Carl Chinn 1999 One Thousand Years of Birmingham which gives a history of Birmingham by districts.

Then:
Search the BIBLIOGRAPHY to see if you are lucky enough to have anything on your area written by Birmingham headteacher, the late John Morris Jones, which will give detailed local information against the general historical background. (Much of this material is currently being put up on the Birmingham Grid for Learning website www.bgfl.org - search for John Morris Jones.

Next:
There is also an excellent series published by Birmingham Library Services with photographs from the Reference Library archives and variously entitled Old Photographs/ Archive Photographs/ Images of England which covers most areas.

And:
Search the BIBLIOGRAPHY under district names which will also give the names of other books and references in periodicals; there is wealth of material available though it may well be patchy.

Finally:
There are in Birmingham lots of knowledgeable people just waiting to be asked who love to share their interest in local history. Make contact via The Birmingham Historian, an excellent periodical published by the Council of the Birmingham and District Association of Local History Societies (B&DALHS) available for purchase, with back-copies held at the Central Library. Each volume contains the names of all local history societies with a named contact. Search their website.

And lastly:
When you do produce something, please let me have a copy - (email the webmaster for my email address)

William Dargue’s History of Birmingham on your Doorstep
ã COPYRIGHT

This document is a free educational resource,
but it remains the copyright of William Dargue.

(To the best of the author’s knowledge any material quoted directly is out of copyright; material is otherwise presented in paraphrase. If this is not the case I shall be glad to be informed, offer my apologies and make amends in the next version.)

I hereby gladly give permission to copy this document in whole or in part
for educational purposes,
but expressly forbid its use for profit.

If you do use any or part of this document you must make acknowledgement to:

William Dargue 2003 History of Birmingham on your Doorstep .


I hope that teachers and others will want to contribute to this document to create the best possible educational resource for Birmingham children.