This gallery contains 10 photos.
Originally posted on Birmingham Children of War:
Despite the war there is lots of evidence that a lot of effort went into celebrating Christmas and continuing to make it a special time of celebration. This was despite the absence of…
#BestofBirmingham #Eatingout
Birmingham has secured fifth place in the latest edition of Harden’s Best UK Restaurants 2017.
This annual guide is based on one of the country’s most detailed surveys of regular restaurant-goers. In Harden’s 26th poll of diners 7,500 participants contributed 50,000 reviews for food, service and ambience.
Congratulations to top scorers Adam’s, Carters, Lasan and Original Patty Men with 5/5 and Al Frash, Gourmet Burger Company and Jyoti with 4/5.
The full listing of Birmingham restaurants (including a new entry for Rofuto) are:
Asha’s
Edmunds
The Karczma
Lasan
Opus Restaurant
Purecraft Bar and Kitchen
Purnells
Purnells Bistro
San Carlo
Simpsons
Turners at 69
#Birmingham #GunQuarter where Birmingham Small Arms (BSA) was founded and Brummagem’s #Gun trade began in 1630 as a response to the political and Revolutionary foment and upheaval that England, Scotland and Ireland was undergoing fully 160 years before the supposedly anarchic and Revolutionary French had their rebellion against the excesses of the French monarchy and aristos came to its head with the 1789 French Revolution…..in 1649 in London, the political, economic and Royal centre of Britain England’s Parliamentarians, who had won the English Civil War (ECW) at the Battle of Worcester when the King of England Charles I’s heir presumptive and supposed successor Charles II was defeated and vanquished and driven into exile in The Netherlands. Parliament and it’s Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell executed Charles I in Parliament Square in Westminster thereby creating the Protectorate in England……Birmingham played an important role on the Parliamentarian side in the English Civil War providing muskets, swords and cannon for the Parliamentarians and was the site of a battle in 1642 which was really merely a skirmish when Prince Rupert was despatched by the King from the Royalist stronghold of Worcester ( the Royalist “Commandery” still exists as a major attraction for tourists to Worcester today….) to “teach those “Bromwichams” (Brummagems) a lesson for supporting Parliament against the King and supplying them with arms) Rupert raised the area of Digbeth and Deritend to the ground by setting Fire to it and killing a number of Birmingham folk…..Brummies were not to take this lying down and as the Royalists rode through Birmingham laying waste to the town at Cape Hill to the West of Birmingham on the border with Staffordshire Royalist Commander: The Earl of Denbigh was cut down while exiting the town of Birmingham and riding through the Shireland Brook by a Parliamentarian musketeer in a skirmish……This antipathy between Birmingham folk and the King and Crown stems from Brummies opposition to the Royalists by taking Parliament’s side in the Civil War and the Battle of Birmingham when the town was burned to the ground by Prince Rupert and his mercenary Royalists
The Bracey Family History in Birmingham Gun Quarter and beyond
BIRMINGHAM Gun Quarter was established in 1630 and my father Leslie Charles Bracey worked there as a teenager in the 1930’s before joining the RAF in 1940 and serving in Bomber Command during World War Two.
My Dad’s Bracey family lived in the back to backs of Lower Shadwell Street in the shadow of Pugin’s magnificent Roman Catholic Cathedral Saint Chad’s with his dad Wilfred Bracey and mom Elsie Bracey nee Freeman whose family had a shop in Kyrwicks Lane, Sparkbrook. Leslie’s siblings were Norman who died in the 1970’s and Edna who is still alive at 89 and living in Redditch.
Leslie Bracey attended Summer Lane School which he left at 14 to work in the Gun trade carrying shotguns to Birmingham Proof House which stands near Birmingham’s Curzon Street Station the terminus of the London to Birmingham Railway built in 1838
The Bracey family moved to Weoley Castle’s Paganel Road following slum clearance in the Gun Quarter in the 1940’s. Edna worked at the Bulpitts Swan kettle factory in Camden Street on the edge of the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter for many years.
The Bracey patriarch Wilfred was a carpenter who worked for the Birmingham Public Works Department around the back of what is now Baskerville House.
My dad told me that his dad Wilfred was one of the Public Works Department carpenters who worked on the shuttering for the concrete pedestal/plinth of the sculptor Willliam Bloye’s depiction of the Lunar Men: Boulton, Watt and Murdoch on Broad Street in the 1950’s.
Fascinating Bracey family History
Keith Bracey @1truclaretnblu
I work at the University of Birmingham in the Medical School and was fascinated to learn that the University has bought one of #Birmingham‘s most iconic buildings, the former Birmingham Municipal Bank HQ at 301 Broad Street as a base for the University of Birmingham in the city centre.
The foundation stone for 301 Broad Street was laid by former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 1920’s.
Neville was the son of the founder of #BirminghamUniversity and its first Chancellor Joseph Chamberlain, a former LordMayor Birmingham, MP and Colonial Secretary.
‘Old Joe’ after whom the Campanile Clock Tower at Chancellor’s Court at the University of Birmingham is named, was the founder of the first #Birmingham political dynasty of the late nineteenth and early 20th century: The Chamberlains of Highbury Hall, the family home which is now being regenerated by Birmingham Conservation Trust.
The final member of the ‘Chamberlain Political Triumvirate’ was Sir Austen Chamberlain, a former Foreign Secretary and Nobel Peace Prize winner for his work on the Locarno Pact in the 1920’s.
These three Birmingham politicians were at the heart of national life in their time and achieved great things…..where are today’s Birmingham leaders who could put the city back where it belongs?
Keith Bracey the Brummie Bard Birmingham & Black Country poet & writer 