CHURCHES AND SCHOOLS
| In 1773 St. Paul's Chapel was built on what was then the northern
edge of the town. Its square and the straight wide streets about it
were the most fashionable for a few decades until industry spread
into them. St. Peter's RC Church off Broad Street (1786) was a deliberately
inconspicuous building. All Saints' opened in 1833 as the Anglican
chapel for the Gooch Estate then about to be overbuilt. Like the other
chapelries of St. Martin's it became a parish church later. In '35
the Doric Temple was consecrated in Key Hill Cemetery. Three years
later George, Lord Calthorpe financed the building of St. George's,
a second church for the fast-growing Edgbaston Estate. St. Mark's
was opened on King Edward's Road in '41 and enlarged in '82.
St. Michael's Vyse Street was a parish church for a few years,
after its opening in '49 : after closure it was re-opened to serve
solely as a CE cemetery chapel. Damaged by bombing, it was demo-lished
in 1953. The RC Oratory was built in 1852 : its small chapel was
replaced by the present domed church in 1906-9. Other Anglican churches
were St. John's Ladywood (built on the site of the Vyse residence,
Ladywood House) 1852, enlarged '81 : St. Barnabas Ryland Street
(after the Rylands who built the church on their land) 1860 : St.
Margaret's Ledsam / Alston Street '75 : St. Cuthbert's Winson Green
: St. Chrysostom Park Road '88 : and St. Peter's Spring Hill 1902,
replacing a church in Dale End. St. Patrick's Dudley Road began
as a Catholic mission in '73, its present church opening twelve
years later. A Catholic school was conducted in Edgbaston from 1724. The King Edward VI Foundation financed a school in a private house in Hockley forty years later. At St. Peter's R. C. Church a Sunday School began in 1799. In 1828 a new school building was opened off Crown (Sheepcote) Street : it was enlarged three times before its closure and replacement by St. Edmund's in Rosebery Street. The Orthopaedic Hospital now uses the building. All Saints' National (Anglican) School was built next to the church in 1844. St. Barnabas' School opposite the church in Ryland Street was in use only between 1848 and '62. St. George's (Beaufort Road), Oratory RC (Hyde Road), and St. John' s (Johnstone Street) opened in 1854, 6, and 7. St. George's was twice enlarged before its replacement in 1967. Oratory had new buildings in '68, later enlarged, and moved to Oliver Road in 1924. The present school opened in '76. The St. John's Schools re-opened on St. Vincent Street Gilby Road in '72. Brookfields began on Pitsford Street in 1870 as All Saints' (Parish) Undenominational School : Birmingham School Board took it over five years later and erected a new building which was en1arged three times and destroyed by enemy action in 1940. The present school opened nine years later. The Board built the following schools : Steward Stewart 1873, Osler Street '75, Nelson and Norton Streets '76, Icknield Street 1900. St. Patrick's RC may have had a beginning in a small school in Coplow Street : the 1883 building on the present site has been enlarged three times. From 1881 King Edward VI Five Ways School occupied the Edgbaston Proprietary School, built four decades earlier. There were several small sectarian schools in the once-populous streets north of Summer Hill / Sandpits, all now gone. St. Philip's RC Boys' School began in 1887, and St. Paul's RC Girls' School in 1908, both on their present sites. Nelson School moved to its present place beside the former Sheepcote Lane in 1972 : St. Edmund's RC which could not be called St. Peter's because of the nearby Anglican church of that name, had opened two years earlier. Ladywood Comprehensive School opened in '72 on a large Middleway site formerly crossed by Beach Street : Follett Osler School, briefly closed, is still in use as an annexe.
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