Churches & Schools

The Masshouse in Edgbaston may have been disused after 1786, when St. Peter's Church was opened off Broad Street : to avoid Protestant objections it was built to look more like a factory than a church. The Oratory in Hagley Road was founded by Cardinal Newman in 1852, the domed church behind it being a memorial to him of 1906-9. Meanwhile the Anglican churches of All Saints' and St. George had been built in Hockley and Calthorpe Fields, 1834 and '8. Thereafter, indicating the westward spread of population, St. John's Ladywood was opened in '54 on the site of the Vyse residence, Christ Church Summer-field in '64, present building '83, and St. Augustine's in '68. The tower and spire of this fine church in the early English style were added eight years later : the porch is modern.

The Baptist Church of the Redeemer was built on Hagley Road in 1882 : its lantern tower was a prominent landmark until demolition seven years ago. A mission hall of '96 at the crossing of City and Portland Roads was replaced by the Byzantine church of St. Germain at the end of War One, which was enparished in 1920. Its parish was carved from that of St. Augustine, which began as a chapelry of St. Bart's Edgbaston, but whose original parish (1889) included the westernmost part of St. Martin's : thus was an ecclesiastical connection of some seven centuries finally broken. Churches of other denominations have appeared on City Road and elsewhere : their foundation stones tell when they were bui1t.

There was a Catholic School in Edgbaston for 68 years from 1724; and this seems to have pride of place as the earliest hereabout. A 'navigation school' is shown by Kempson (1810) on the site of Monument Road Station. All Saints' (Church) School opened in '44, St. George's Beaufort Road ten years later, and St, John's, Ladywood in '57. Dudley Road Elementary School was opened by George Dixon, Chairman of Birmingham School Board in '78, Foundry Road ('83), Barford Road ('87), Benson Read ('88) and City Road ('95).

The site of the George Dixon Schools on City Road was originally intended for an elementary school only, but it was thought that there was room for a secondary school as well. As the latter was in fact two schools, for boys and girls, and the elementary school became separate Junior and Infant Schools at the '32 reorganisation, there are now four schools having the honoured name - and very cramped they are. The first school to bear Dixon's name was - and still is - in Oozells Street. It was a building of 1877; converted and opened in '98, the year of his death, replacing the 'Higher Grade' School he had set up at his own expense in Bridge Street. For full details see the companion booklet. There was a long pause in educational building after the urbanisation of the Heath and the north end of the Park. Not until 1957 was further development undertaken : in that year Portland School was opened for secondary pupils from the City Road school.

Then came Lordswood ('57-8), Cardinal Newman RC ('59), Stanmore ('66), and Blessed Humphrey Middlemore ('68). Stan-more was built on G.D. Field because there was room for it, but its pupils were to come largely from north of Dudley Road, where there was not. Now it houses the Lower School of George Dixon School. St. John's, St, George's, and the Oratory School have new buildings, Barford has been improved, but little has been or can be done to the G.D. J. and I. Schools. Summerfield (Dudley Road) School celebrated its centenary and then moved into an open-plan structure on Heath Street. The old building is used as a college annexe.

Birmingham University was designed as an imposing semi-circle of buildings in Byzantine style, which was never completed : an amazing complex of modern fashions in architecture has developed thereabout since War Two. On Westbourne Road the former training college is now a small part of the mammoth Polytechnic.