IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Bordesley Street, BIRMINGHAM, B5 5PG

Taken from the upper floor of Birmingham Co-operative Building (that was) - the bank was on top floor with views out eastward. A cold winter's day, pre-dating the reopening of Snow Hill line, and before building of new Bull Ring. Top right you can clearly see the viaducts running off towards Bordesley. Foreground/right the goods yard, like other redundant railway yards doubled as a car park - no clampers in these days ! :)

In 1998 this once forgotten fenced-off area in Shaw’s Passage became Digbeth Community Garden after the council agreed to a group of volunteers tidying it up the site to celebrate Birmingham Friends of the Earth’s 21st anniversary. As a result of having previously been an industrial site it was polluted with traces of lead, arsenic, copper and zinc and so the volunteers used pallets and created raised beds for growing food on donated topsoil, thus the contamination challenge became a design feature. Paths were made using donated slabs and gravel while a patio for a social area was constructed out of bricks recovered from a former on-site Victorian warehouse. Although currently run down, an HS2 railway-related development plan for the area has proposed that “Shaw’s Passage can be transformed as a pedestrianised street leading to Paternoster Place, allowing for a mix of retail, restaurant and leisure uses to flourish within the existing railway arches, together with new developments.”

An early morning photo of a section of Allison Street. The road on the left is Shaw's Passage, site of the currently run-down Digbeth Community Garden. Immediately behind the photographer, Allison Street passes beneath a railway bridge that carries trains between Bordesley and Moor Street stations.

The view NW from the second floor of Latif's (a discount retailer) on New Canal Street. Centre-right is Curzon Street Station; beyond it is Millennium Point, the city's newish science museum.

Looking across the junction of Fazeley Street and New Canal Street, with a distant glimpse of the Bull Ring and the refurbished Rotunda. It is clear from the map that New Bartholomew Street was formed when Bartholomew Street was severed by the railway east of the city. Street nameplate spells it Bartolomew.