![]() ![]() Thank you for supporting our blog and we hope that you continue to share in our love of our collections and the history of the amazing City of Birmingham.Īrchives & Collections has many hidden facets amongst the panoply of resources and materials retained by the section. We are still going strong with a jam-packed line up of articles to see out the year, not forgetting our 2016 Explore Your Archives campaign which we are launching with an exhibition on Saturday 19th November, and would love you to get involved with! Best views ever in a day: 643 on 31st December 2012.Most active day for comments: 26th September 2013.Top blog post: Birmingham Burial Records with 2610 views. ![]() The Iron Room is celebrating Our Libraries week so we are posting this a little early but we thought you might be interested in a few statistics from a wonderful 5 years… To celebrate our 200th blog, 200 and Counting! back in December 2014, we had a look back at some of our favourite articles and the weird and wonderful items that we found in our collections and wanted to share with you. Our very first blog post on the Pageant of Birmingham was published on 24th October 2011 and to this day is still holding steady as the 4th most looked at post! Image from the gallery of the Iron Room [L53.31 Photographs: Central Public and Commercial Libraries in Birmingham} On Monday, 24th October, The Iron Room turns 5 years old!!! 155 years, 6 months and 22 days of Our Libraries.)” →īy chance, we recently found an album of images of the old Reference Library including images of the Iron Room, the inspiration for our name. ![]() Continue reading “150 years of Our Libraries (a.k.a. Like some kind of history-blog sommelier, I would suggest you pair this timeline with the gallery of images from our collections to be found here as many of the places and events mentioned below can be found depicted in the photos/drawings in the online gallery. I will say that there is a great deal more I could, and would like to, add to this timeline but the constraints of time see this very much as a potted history. The 150 years refers to the sesquicentennial of Birmingham Reference library, which opened on the 26 th October 1866, the same day as the laying of the foundation stone at Gosta Green and the opening of Deritend library.Ĭity Librarian’s desk, With that pedantry out of the way: what’s happened in those 155 years, 6 months and 22 days? Well, the aim of this blog is to provide a recap of the events of the last 150 odd years to record notable events, the opening dates of branch and community libraries and other odd titbits of information. The first public library (the Northern District Lending library, based in rented premises on Constitution Hill) opened 3rd April 1861 (a Wednesday, fact fans), hence the alternative title of this blog 155 years, 6 months and 22 days of our libraries. He was beautifully dressed in an embroidered coat, a long fancy satin or silk waistcoat, white silk stockings, and shoes with very large buckles.” The exposure to the air immediately caused the body and clothes to crumble into pieces, and very speedily there was nothing left but his bones.’Ĭontinue reading “The Burials of John Baskerville” →įirst things first: “150 years” is something of a miscalculation. ‘and there lay Baskerville, looking very much the same as he had done in the early day in January, 1775, when he was soldered up, having been previously embalmed with great care. A subsequent recap of one uncovering of Baskerville is chronicled in The Daily Argus: Marston at his warehouse in Monmouth Street. Gibson (where a ghoulish drawing of his face was made!) onto a Mr. From here, he passed through the cellar of a Mr. In around 1828 his coffin was uncovered and opened. Baskerville’s resting place was a place to rest no more. However, by the 1820s, Birmingham, still growing, ate into the grounds of Easy Hill – the land being required to expand the canal and other buildings needed to support local industry. ![]() His request over his resting place, once followed, should therefore have been the quiet end to his physical self. (Visitors to the library will know that Baskerville House and the sculpture, Industry and Genius: Monument to John Baskerville, next door commemorate this.) As a religious sceptic, he did not wish to be buried in consecrated grounds, and instead asked to be buried in his own garden at home on Easy Hill (the area is shown here on Samuel Bradford’s survey of Birmingham, 1750.) Samuel Bradford’s survey of Birmingham, 1750Įasy Hill occupied the same land we approximately do today. As it’s that time of year, for a creepy tale, we here at the library need venture no further than our own front door, or that, should I say, of John Baskerville the famous japanner and designer of Baskerville type font.īaskerville, born in 1706/7, in Wolverley, near Kidderminster, sadly died in 1775 in Birmingham. ![]()
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