BT Tower, Birmingham

Anchor Exchange was an underground, hardened telephone exchange built in Birmingham, England. Construction commenced in 1953 under the guise of building an underground railway. It opened in September 1957 at a cost of £4 million. It was located nominally on Newhall Street. However its network of tunnels extended from at least the Jewellery Quarter to Southside.It originally formed one of a network of 18 zone switching centres within the UK telephone system that provided trunk switching facilities within its own charge group and to group switching centres (GSC) within an area broadly comprising the West Midlands and central Wales. The exchange formed part of the trunk mechanisation plan commenced in 1939 to permit operators from originating GSCs to dial through to a distant UK subscriber without requiring further operator intervention. Later, it was additionally used to switch subscriber dialled trunk calls after its introduction at Bristol in 1958. It was subsequently augmented and superseded by a transit switching centre (TSC) equipped with a crossbar switching system (TXK4) which formed part of the transit network. It parented two of the first three GSCs at Worcester and Wolverhampton to go live when the transit network was inaugurated in 1971 which eventually provided universal UK automatic subscriber dialling and was completed in 1979.The Anchor telephone exchange tunnels are still used to house communication cables. They have been updated with firebreak compartments and hazardous asbestos has been removed. They are continually pumped out because of the city's rising water table.The exchange took its name from the hallmark of Birmingham Assay Office, which depicts an anchor.

Newhall Street is a street located in Birmingham, England. Newhall Street stretches from Colmore Row in the city centre by St Phillip's Cathedral in a north-westerly direction towards the Jewellery Quarter. Originally the road was the driveway to New Hall occupied by the Colmore family. New Hall was demolished in 1787 after being vacated by the Colmores and used as a warehouse by Matthew Boulton. Newhall Street was so named in 1766, after opening as a public street in 1746 called Newport Street and then New Hall Walk. The streets on the estate were named after the children of the family. A number of telephone exchanges have existed on the street: the 1896 Bell Edison Telephone building, Telephone House (still an exchange), the Cold War Anchor Exchange underneath it, and Brindley House (now renovated into an apartment block).

Kerrang! Radio is a specialist digital rock music radio station owned and operated by Bauer and forms part of the Kiss Network. As of June 2023, the station has a weekly audience of 364,000 listeners according to RAJAR.

The Birmingham Assay Office, one of the four assay offices in the United Kingdom, is located in the Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham. The development of a silver industry in 18th century Birmingham was hampered by the legal requirement that items of solid silver be assayed, and the nearest Assay Offices were in Chester and London. Matthew Boulton and Birmingham's other great industrialists joined forces with silversmiths of Sheffield to petition Parliament for the establishment of Assay Offices in their respective cities. In spite of determined opposition by London silversmiths, an Act of Parliament was passed in March 1773, just one month after the original petition was presented to Parliament, to allow Birmingham and Sheffield the right to assay silver. The Birmingham Assay Office opened on 31 August 1773 and initially operated from three rooms in the King's Head Inn on New Street employing only four staff and was only operating on a Tuesday. The first customer on that day was Matthew Boulton.The assay office is managed by a board of 36 "Guardians of the Standard of Wrought Plate in Birmingham", between six and nine of whom must be connected with the trade. The hallmark of the Birmingham Assay Office is the Anchor, and that of the Sheffield Assay Office was the Crown. A story about the origins of this hallmark goes that meetings prior to the inauguration of both Birmingham and Sheffield Assay Offices in 1773 were held at a public house called the Crown and Anchor Tavern on the Strand, London. It is said that the choice of symbol was made on the toss of a coin which resulted in Birmingham adopting the Anchor and Sheffield the Crown (which was changed in 1977 to the White Rose of York).Services provided by the office include nickel testing, metal analysis, plating thickness determination, bullion certification, consultancy and gem certification. Platinum was brought within the Hallmarking Act 1973.

Queensway is the name of a number of roads in central Birmingham, England. The name most often refers to the Queensway tunnel, part of the A38. However the name is also used as a suffix of several other roads and circuses, such as Smallbrook Queensway and Colmore Circus Queensway; all of these were once part of the historic A4400 Inner Ring Road, which was often called collectively the Queensway. The Inner Ring Road (i.e. the Queensways) were built as dual carriageway major roads in the 1960s and 1970s. Junctions on the road were largely grade separated, with pedestrians kept physically separate from vehicular traffic and most junctions allowing vehicles staying on the road to pass over or under those using the junction. It is now widely regarded as one of the classic urban planning blunders of the 20th century. Although seen as a revolutionary improvement when the first section opened in 1960, the 'Concrete Collar', as it became known, was viewed by council planners as an impenetrable barrier for the expansion of the city centre. In particular, it became unpopular with pedestrians who were required to use subways at the roundabouts. According to the Birmingham Big City Plan published in 2011, the Ring Road has restricted open spaces, growth and economic activity. It has also made the city centre more crowded and harder to navigate.After 1988, the city council sought to recreate links between the city centre and the neighbouring areas, enlarging the city centre and improving the pedestrian environment across the city, with an emphasis on shifting vehicular movements out to The Middleway. The Inner Ring Road was effectively dismantled by the 2000s - many roads have been rebuilt and downgraded and now far more resemble city streets.

The Elkington Silver Electroplating Works was a building on Newhall Street in Birmingham, England. It later housed the Birmingham science museum Museum of Science and Industry until the creation of Thinktank. Standing opposite the Birmingham Assay Office, the original 19th century silver electroplating factory of George Elkington, built in 1838, once occupied a much longer, grandiose building on Newhall Street which was largely demolished in the mid-1960s. The works had many workshops and warehouses along and over the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal and the now filled-in Whitmore's Arm (or Miss Colmore's Arm) canal, which ran through the site. In the early 1850s there was a steam-powered electric generator with 64 permanent magnets arranged in a circle and a rotating wrought iron armature. The electroplating process involved solutions of cyanide of silver and potassium cyanide. The building carries two blue plaques on its wall, one to George Elkington, and another to his employee Alexander Parkes who is credited with inventing the first plastic.

The Birmingham Stock Exchange originally opened in 1845. The imposing offices on the corner of Great Charles Street and Margaret Street, now a Grade II listed building, were home to the city's stock exchange from 1928 onwards, and were the centre of Birmingham stockbroking until their closure in 1986 after the Big Bang. Its function was to raise capital through joint stock issues for manufacturers, mineral extractors and railway companies. The Birmingham Stock Exchange Association was formed in 1845, though an association of share brokers was apparently in existence before that date. It first met in the old Royal Hotel, then, after being held in various hired rooms in Waterloo Passage from c. 1874, it moved in c. 1894 to Newhall Street, where the building in existence in 1955 was opened in 1928.

Birmingham Guild of Handicraft was an Arts and Crafts organisation operating in Birmingham, England, established at the end of the 19th century.

The Birmingham and Midland Institute (popularly known as the Midland Institute) (grid reference SP066870), is an institution concerned with the promotion of education and learning in Birmingham, England. It is now based on Margaret Street in Birmingham city centre. It was founded in 1854 as a pioneer of adult scientific and technical education (General Industrial, Commercial and Music); and today continues to offer arts and science lectures, exhibitions and concerts. It is a registered charity. There is limited free access to the public, with further facilities available on a subscription basis.

The Queen's Arms (sometimes styled "The Queens Arms") is a Grade II listed public house in Birmingham, England, built c. 1870. It is noted for the tiled art nouveau signage on its exterior, which was remodelled in 1901 to the designs of the architect, Joseph D. Ward for its then owners, Mitchells & Butlers.The red brick building sits on the corner of Charlotte Street and Newhall Street, on the edge of the city's Jewellery Quarter. It was given Grade II listed status in April 2004.Scenes for the BBC serial television drama Line of Duty were filmed in the pub.

St Paul's Square is a Georgian square in the Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham, England, named after the church in its centre. It is the last remaining Georgian Square in the city. Built 1777–1779 on the Newhall estate of the Colmore family, it was an elegant and desirable location in the mid-nineteenth century. At the end of the nineteenth century the square was swallowed by workshops and factories, with the fronts of some buildings being pulled down to make shop fronts or factory entrances. Much restoration was done in the 1970s and many of the buildings are Grade II listed. As well as bars, cafés and restaurants, which line the square's four sides, a number of apartment schemes have been built in the area, including a restoration of the façade of the Thomas Walker building, a former buckle maker, which fronts onto the square. St Paul's Club is situated in St Paul's Square. Formed in 1859, it is the Midlands' oldest private members club. The Royal Birmingham Society of Artists has its offices and gallery in premises just off the square. St Paul's Square is served by St Paul's tram stop.

St Paul's is a Church of England church in the Georgian St Paul's Square in the Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham, England.