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The Colmore Building

Buildings and structures in Birmingham, West Midlands
Colmore Plaza
Colmore Plaza

The Colmore Building, formerly known as Colmore Plaza, is a 14-storey office building in the Colmore Business District area of Birmingham City Centre.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article The Colmore Building (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

The Colmore Building
Colmore Circus Queensway, Birmingham Digbeth

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Wikipedia: The Colmore BuildingContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 52.483555555556 ° E -1.8957222222222 °
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Address

Colmore Plaza

Colmore Circus Queensway 20
B4 6AT Birmingham, Digbeth
England, United Kingdom
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Colmore Plaza
Colmore Plaza
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Gun Quarter
Gun Quarter

The Gun Quarter is a district of the city of Birmingham, England, which was for many years a centre of the world's gun-manufacturing industry, specialising in the production of military firearms and sporting guns. It is an industrial area to the north of the city centre, bounded by Steelhouse Lane, Shadwell Street and Loveday Street. The first recorded gun maker in Birmingham was in 1630, and locally made muskets were used in the English Civil War. By the 1690s Birmingham artisans were supplying guns for William III to equip the English Army (and successor British Army after 1707). The importance of the trade to the town grew rapidly throughout the 18th century, with large numbers of guns produced for the slave trade. The 19th century saw further expansion, with the Quarter meeting the demand for the Napoleonic Wars, Crimean War, American Civil War and the British Empire. During both the First and Second World Wars the area played a major role in the manufacture of small arms for the British Armed Forces. After the First World War demand fell; the need for skilled, specialised labour fell as the market became flooded with cheaper, machine-made guns, and gun manufacturing in the area began a slow decline. In the 1960s, a large part of the Gun Quarter was demolished by post-war town planners, with the area split in two by the construction of the Birmingham Inner Ring Road. Following the Big City Plan of 2008, the Gun Quarter is now a district within Birmingham City Centre. Many buildings in the area are disused but plans are in place for redevelopment including in Shadwell Street and Vesey Street.

Priory of St Thomas of Canterbury, Birmingham
Priory of St Thomas of Canterbury, Birmingham

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.