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The Priory or Hospital of St Thomas of Canterbury was a house of Augustinian canons in medieval Birmingham. The institution is referred to in sources as either a priory or a hospital, but the two roles were often overlapping or interchangeable during the medieval period, as all monastic institutions were supposed to care for the poor, sick and itinerant. The priory was situated north of Bull Street - then called Chapel Street after the priory's chapel of St Mary - in an extensive tract of its own land that extended as far as the Prior's rabbit warren or conygre, now marked by Congreve Street near Chamberlain Square. The date of the priory's foundation is unknown, but numerous later records suggest that it was established by a member of the de Birmingham family. The first record of the priory occurs in 1286, when gifts of property from three local land-owners were licensed to be held in mortmain; and a pardon issued in 1310 for the failure to similarly license thirty-three other donations of land suggests that the priory was thriving at this time. In 1344, however, its management was severely criticised by a visitation, and it was extensively reformed by the Bishop of Lichfield. This seems to have been effective and resulted in a further series of endowments, including the establishment of a chantry in its chapel.The priory was dissolved in 1536 with the banning of smaller institutions at the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The chapel survived ten years beyond the priory's dissolution to support its chantry, until it too was dissolved in 1546-1547. The priory's estate was sold and redeveloped as Old Square. Large numbers of human bones were found during the development of the priory's land for housing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including some found to the south of Bull Street which may suggest either that a second graveyard existed south of Bull Street, or that the original line of Bull Street may itself have lain further to the south. This has been taken by some historians to indicate that the chapel may have been the original church of Birmingham and preceded the establishment of St Martin in the Bull Ring, though other historians doubt this.

Martineau Place is a shopping centre located in the city centre of Birmingham, England. It contains a mixture of shops and restaurants, with the emphasis on food and drink which is located on the roofs of the shops. Retailers include Sainsbury's, Deichmann, Boots, Argos and Poundland, the upper levels of the centre include a 168-room hotel. It is located on land bounded by High Street, Union Street, Bull Street and Corporation Street, with primary retail frontages on all these streets. It is directly opposite the House of Fraser department store, formerly known as Rackhams. The Martineau Way pedestrian route runs through the centre of Martineau Place, and includes further retail frontages. This also connects the Centre to main thoroughfare New Street (via Union Passage) and to the separate Priory Square shopping centre (via Dalton Way).

Old Square is a public square and road junction in the Core area of Birmingham City Centre, England.

The Upper Priory Cotton Mill, opened in Birmingham, England in the summer of 1741, was the world's first mechanised cotton-spinning factory or cotton mill. Established by Lewis Paul and John Wyatt in a former warehouse in the Upper Priory, near Paul's house in Old Square, it was the first of the Paul-Wyatt cotton mills that used the roller spinning machinery that they had developed and that had been patented by Paul in 1738, that for the first time enabled the spinning of cotton "without the aid of human fingers". Wyatt had realised that this machinery would enable several machines to be powered from a single source of power: foreseeing the development of the factory system, he envisaged "a kind of mill, with wheels turned either by horses, water or wind."

Forum Birmingham is a music venue located in Dale End, Birmingham, West Midlands, England.

Bull Street tram stop is a tram stop on the West Midlands Metro tram system serving Bull Street in the Birmingham city centre, England. Construction started in June 2012, and it was opened on 6 December 2015, becoming the first stop of the city-centre extension to open, and the first on-street tram stop to operate in Birmingham since the closure of the Birmingham Corporation Tramways in 1953, and the temporary southern terminus of the service. The rest of the extension to Grand Central was opened on 30 May 2016, and then onto Edgbaston Village in July 2022. Work started on a new line to Birmingham Moor Street in 2022 which will be gradually extended to the eventual terminus at Birmingham Airport. To allow for the new connection to be made it became necessary to temporarily terminate all trams at Bull Street.

Martineau Galleries is a proposed mixed-use development for Birmingham, England which was shelved in 2009 but re-approved in 2020. It was to connect the Eastside to the city centre core, a major retail area.

The Royal Hotel, originally just The Hotel, was a hotel located on Temple Row in Birmingham, England. Opened in 1772, it was the first establishment in Birmingham to describe itself as a "hotel", a new term entering usage around this time to denote a more fashionable and genteel establishment than the more traditional inn.Notable guests who stayed at the hotel included Louis XVIII of France, Lord Nelson, the Duke of Gloucester and Queen Victoria. As well as accommodation for visitors, the hotel included assembly rooms that formed Birmingham's main meeting place for polite social gatherings during the later part of the Midlands Enlightenment. 80 feet long and 30 feet wide, the assembly rooms included an organ and space for an orchestra, and were decorated in a "tasteful and decorative manner" with three large chandeliers, six large mirrors and five cut glass lustres designed to reflect candlelight throughout the room. The room was accessed through a "spacious saloon" and up a grand staircase. The building of the hotel was motivated by criticism of Sawyer's Assembly Rooms in Old Square in 1765 by the Duke of York, who remarked that "a town of such magnitude as Birmingham, and adorned with so much beauty, deserved a superior accommodation, that the room itself was mean, but the entrance still meaner". In response to this slight a group of influential local figures met at Widow Aston's Coffee House in Cherry Street in 1770 and resolved to raise £4,000 to build a hotel worthy of the town's reputation. The result was the establishment of a tontine, that eventually raised £15,000 with subscribers including John Ash, founder of Birmingham General Hospital; Matthew Boulton, the owner of the Soho Manufactory; Charles Holte of Aston Hall; John Taylor, one of the founders of Lloyds Bank; and Lunar Society member Thomas Day.The principal events of the social season at the hotel during its early years were its Subscription Dancing Assemblies, and series of concerts held by Jeremiah Clark and the Birmingham Dilettanti Musical Society. In 1788 these were combined to form a single social season which featured six concerts and balls held every month during the winter, with card and dancing assemblies during the intervening fortnights, and a separate season of monthly concerts during the summer. From 1790 the hotel was one of the venues for the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival.On 14 July 1791 the hotel was the venue for the dinner to celebrate the storming of the Bastille that was to lead to the Priestley Riots, and on 14 December 1829 it was the site of the founding of Thomas Attwood's Birmingham Political Union.The hotel retained an upmarket reputation throughout its existence, but with only three shares remaining and the lease on the hotel expiring, the tontine was wound up in 1861 and the hotel sold for redevelopment.

The Pitman Vegetarian Hotel was a hotel that opened in 1898 in the County Buildings (now Grade II* listed), Corporation Street, Birmingham, England, as an expansion of a vegetarian restaurant on the same site. The manager was James Henry Cook. According to his daughter, Kathleen Keleny, it was named after Sir Isaac Pitman, then vice-president of the Vegetarian Society. It was still operating in the 1930s. The same proprietor ran the Pitman Health Food Co. (also called Pitman Reform Food Stores) at Aston Brook Street, Birmingham, advertising in 1909 as "The Largest Health Food Dealers in the World". Selling direct and by mail order, it manufactured meat-free products including Pitman Sea-Side Paste, Pitman Savoury Nut Meat, Nuto Cream, Brazose Meat, Vigar Extract, Vegsal Soups and Fruitarian Cakes and wafers. It also sold cooking utensils such as the Pitman Steam Cooker, a multilevel boiler and steamer.Mahatma Gandhi is known to have received jars of Nuto Cream and Nuto Cream Soup from the company.After the War, Pitman Building's warren of rooms housed Chest Xray, and various voluntary organisations under the aegis of Birmingham Voluntary Service Council, and its General Secretary Michael C Matcham, including Citizens Advice Bureau, Visiting Service for Old People, Personal Service Committee (administering SSAFA funds), Byv, Adventure Camps, Spode Holidays, Rubella playschemes, Lee Bank Saturday playscheme.

The Midlands Plateau is a plateau covering approximately 3,200 km2 in the Midlands of England, bounded by the Rivers Severn, Avon and Trent. The plateau is made up of three subdivisions: the Birmingham Plateau forms the central core, separated by the valley of the River Blythe from the East Warwickshire Plateau to the east, and by the valley of the River Stour from the Mid-Severn Plateau to the west.

The Great Western Arcade (grid reference SP070871) is a covered Grade II listed Victorian shopping arcade lying between Colmore Row and Temple Row in Birmingham City Centre, England. It was built (1875-6) over the Great Western Railway line cutting at the London end of Snow Hill station. The cutting was covered in 1874. Originally the broad gauge Paddington line ran through a tunnel which stopped at Temple Row and then an open cutting to Snow Hill station. The cutting was roofed over in 1874 and the Great Western Arcade built on top, the line of the new 'tunnel' being offset slightly to the north of the centre of the arcade. The extended tunnel has a length of 596 yards (545 m). The arcade was designed by W. H. Ward of Paradise Street, Birmingham. The arcade has entrances at each end: the one at Temple Row is ornate, unlike the modern reworking at Colmore Row, opposite the entrance to the station. The arcade's roof was originally a glazed semi-circular barrel vault with a glazed central dome, similar to that of the Gallerio Vittoria Emmanuele in Milan which was constructed at the same time. It was destroyed during World War II and has been replaced. The arcade, containing shops on both sides, has a clock which strikes the quarters on a set of five exposed bells.

Colmore Gate is an office and retail building in Birmingham, England. An example of early 1990s architecture by the Seymour Harris Partnership, the lift shaft is on the outside of the building and the windows are tinted a dark blue colour. The design blends a traditional look with modern materials and style. It is situated in the heart of the business district of Birmingham. The building is home to many large companies. The building sits on the former footprint of the old Greys department store, torn down by PJ Murray Haulage in the 1980s. The building was constructed after the developers bought the patch of land off another developing company whilst they were constructing a building there. The structure of a building was on the site and it was taken down before construction of Colmore Gate began.