Places of Worship

Every place of worship known to have existed in Birmingham at any time is listed with details in V.C.H. Vol. VII (BIRMINGHAM). - -
St. Martin's and St. Philip's were both overcrowded by the mid-C18 th . In 1749 a plot of land on the edge of Little Park was given by ironmaster John Jennens for the building of St. Bartholomew's Chapel, opened the next year. In 1779 St. Paul's and St. Mary's Chapels were begun on sites at the then northern edge of the town. These and later ones were chapelries of St. Martin for some years.

The Parish of St. Philip was a small rectangle of the Georgian 'new town'. St. Paul's, on Colmore land, at first lacked its present tower. The octagonal St. Mary's was built on the Weaman Estate. About both an elegant square of terraces was soon constructed. In 1803 Christ Church was opened at the top of New Street: it was 'suitably plain' being intended for 'the accommodation of the lower classes'. The spire and portico were added two years later, instead of the planned dome. Waterloo Steps behind it were made c.1827. Until then orchards and a farm separated CC. and St. Philip's. The 1820's brought to the town three fine suburban churches: these were Holy Trinity on Camp Hill, a developing district, Thomas Rickman's St. Thomas's Ionic chapel in Bath Row and his Gothic St. George's in Great Hampton Row - latter having cast-iron gates and window-frame-s. Catholic chapels had returned to the town - St. Peter's off Broad Street, built to look like a factory and escape Anglican ire (1789), and St. Chad's in Shadwell Street. By 1813 there were 2 Roman and 6 Baptist chapels, a Congregationalist chapel in Carrs Lane, 2 Unitarian Meeting Houses, and a synagogue. Later there were 5 Methodist chapels. All Saints' Church was denied a fashionable parish by the Council's refusal to develop it as a local Bloomsbury.

In 1847 there were 24 parish churches in B'ham, Edgbaston, and Aston, 9 of them built since 1830. In the next 20 years there were a dozen more. By 1867 there were 93 places of worship in and around the town.

Birmingham was made an R.C. Archbishopric, and St. Chad's Cathedral designed by Augustus Welby Pugin (1838) began the Gothic Revival hereabout. St. Mary's College at Oscott, and the Oratory of St. Philip Neri (Hagley Road from Alcester Street 1852) were the next Catholic buildings.

Due to drastic decline in the population of the central wards from the 1880's, town churches began to close. Christ Church was demolished in 1897, and since then many chapels, St. Mary's, St. Bart's, St. Peter's Dale End and others farther out have gone. Suburban churches have sometimes been heirs of these, like St. Agatha's Sparkbrook and Hall Green Baptist Church. In 1905 Birmingham became an Anglican Bishopric and St. Philip's the pro-Cathedral.