 Well, welcome everyone to this evening's event. My name is Martin Porcelain. I'm just going to, before I start to introduce tonight's event, I'm just going to wait a moment or two while people enter the virtual room, the webinar. And as their participants, the numbers were already up to, goodness me, we've nearly got a hundred already. We're just about to get our century. And when we've got a quorum in a minute or two, but we can be, we can begin properly. So I'm just going to pause for a moment. I think we're ready to go. Thanks Martin. Okay, lovely. Well, good evening and welcome to this evening's event, the Pebsner Architectural Guides, Birmingham and the Black Country. Before I say a few words of introduction, there are a few little housekeeping things that some of you will be familiar with, but I will say them anyway. The talks are going to last about 45 minutes, although we're not, we're not hugely strict about that. And we're going to follow it by some Q&A, some questions and comments. You can type questions into the Q&A function, which is the thing that is really useful. So if you have a question and at any time you don't have to wait till the Q&A, if something occurs to you, then you can pop a question or a comment in there. The session is recorded and it's made available to the public. And as it says on your screen, closed captioning is available and you click the CC button on your screen to enable the captions. Okay, so I think without further ado, I just want to say one or two words in terms of our preliminaries. I'm Martin Posal. I'm senior research fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre. And it's my great pleasure to welcome you to this evening's book launch. Birmingham and the Black Country, which is the very latest addition to the Buildings of England series, otherwise known to many people simply as Pevsner architectural guides, or we can just Pevsner, in recognition of their creator and founder, author, St. Nicholas Pevsner. The series was inaugurated in 1951 and initially published by Penguin Books. The research and the titles were supported laterally by the Pevsner Books Trust. From 2012 to the present day by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and published, of course, by Yale University Press. Before I introduce this evening's speakers, I just want to say a word about the Paul Mellon Centre for those of you, and I'm sure there will be some who may not have come across us before or know precisely what we're about. The centre is part of the Yale University. It was founded in 1970 by the art collector and philanthropist Paul Mellon. We are an educational charity and we take pride in publishing and championing new ways of understanding British art history and culture. As well as publishing, we teach, we carry out research, both at the centre in London at 15 to 16 Bedford Square and through our online platforms, increasingly over the past couple of years, obviously, due to unforeseen circumstances. Our archives, library and events programme are open to researchers, students and the public, and I'm pleased to say that we're now beginning to see, to welcome visitors and increasing numbers back to the centre as restrictions ease. In addition, our grants and fellowships programme forms an important part of who we are and what we do. It supports institutions and individuals with research projects, publications, exhibitions and events. And through all the areas of our work, we promote activities that enhance and expand knowledge about all aspects and time periods of British art and architecture. So to business, it's my pleasure to introduce Andy Foster, author of Birmingham and the Black Country, Simon Bradley, joint editor of Pebsner Architectural Guides and James Davis, who undertook much of the new and I must say superlative photographs contained in the volume. Andy of course has an encyclopedic knowledge of the matter to hand being, as he says, a sudden cold field child. And while Simon's family roots like Jasper Carrot and the legendary Ozzy Osbourne are in brum, although he seems to have lost the accent. Before I hand over one more thing, it wouldn't be a proper book launch if we didn't sell some books. So to tempt you, Gale University Press is delighted to offer attendees of this virtual launch, a special discount price for the new Pebsner guide to Birmingham and the Black Country. So you'll receive a discount code with your event, Bright Confirmation email. And the recommended price is retail price is £45. And we're offering it for £35. UK all those only and it's free postage backing. That code is available from today, 26th of April till the 7th of May. And full details are available on our website. So end of the advert and Simon, I'm going to hand over to you. How is that looking? It's coming across very well. Thanks Simon. Waiting for Andy to join us. I'm here. Hello Simon. Very good. Great, you're brought on screen now. Thank you very much. So welcome everyone to the West Midlands, wherever you may be. And our thanks to Andy for giving us this magnificent compendium, one of the fuller and larger volumes of our recent series. And I should say, for those who have been following the series or for those who haven't, that Andy was previously engaged with us to write the City Guide to Birmingham. So that's the centre of Birmingham and selected areas roundabout. But this of course covers a much, much larger territory. And we're going to talk about some of the regional, well particular places and general themes that come out of them just by going through 15, 20 or so individual images from the book. And one that isn't from the book, that's important. That's the very last one and you'll see the reason. And we're going to start not in Birmingham, but in Wolverhampton. So Andy, the Wolverhampton Cross, this is really pretty well where it starts in terms of standing structures, isn't it? Well it is, yes. This is really the only Anglo-Saxon piece we've got in the area. But it's a mighty and tremendous one with some remarkable fluorated decoration which has engaged various researchers over the years. It stands in just outside Wolverhampton St Peter's Collegiate Church. And it roots the whole area in a period well before anything else would do. Indeed, we start with Wolverhampton because in the Middle Ages Wolverhampton was a far more important part of the place than Brun. Birmingham was a little market town turning to industry. Wolverhampton was already a pretty important town based on walls. And presently we'll see a little bit of what happens when we turn around because there's a splendid collegiate church behind it. I do have a great affection for Wolverhampton and this guy does produce a slight change in loyalties for me. I'm a brummy really. Something cold feels when my father's job moved in. But I think these days I tend to rather have great affection for Wolverhampton. It's the most underrated big city in England. And it has an enormous amount to offer the visitor in terms of historic buildings if you will only search them out. And they start with this. This absolutely splendid Anglo-Saxon monument. So shall we see another one? Yeah. This is where we go back to, in a sense, my school days in old fashioned sort of antiquarians books that were at the school library. The church antiquarian JC Cox called this splendid stone pocket in all England. It's 15th century. We don't know exactly the date. But there's work recorded in 1439. There are traces of colour on the other side. As you can see, it's panelled splendidly all round and it's literally part of one of the arcade columns in the neighbour of St Peter's. Down at the end of the staircase there is a tremendous lion standing there on his haunches. Like most medieval lions, it doesn't bear a complete resemblance to what we'd actually see as lions now, because many of the sculptors had strange ideas of lions. But he's a splendid animal standing there. There's a story that 19th century choir boys were greased by saying if the sermon went on beyond half an hour, the lion would start yawning. And it is an absolutely tremendous structure. And the collegiate church itself, which was an odd building, it was a world peculiar until 1846. Special status, survival reformation. But the collegiate church itself is a splendid structure, but perhaps a bit over restored in the 19th century by you and Christian. But the pulpit is absolutely genuine and is a tremendous place. And there's always stood there since it was built. I think it's a sign of the sort of unexpected things that you didn't find in Berlin, the Black Country. There's a lot more medieval work than you can think. And part of the fun of writing this book has been to find medieval work where you didn't expect it, like King Gwyneth the Old Church, where if you look very hard, there's just enough to show you that there's a 13th century old church there before. You have to look pretty hard, but it is there. Discoveries like that really are quite sort of primary stuff. It's unusual to be able to expand buildings in that way to discover things at that period that people haven't quite realized were there before. But this is one of them. It's always been known, but I think it really ought to be known a lot better than it is. It really is a splendid medieval artifact and the decorations superb. And you don't want to tempt anybody to go into the collegiate church when they're in war with Hampton. So moving now out of the Middle Ages, but staying with churches is something from the other side of the territory. Well, I confess that churches are interesting, and this really is my childhood because this was my childhood Paris church. I didn't realize then that the paneling, which was always known to be interesting, was so important. But it comes from Worcester Cathedral and it was put into Worcester in 1557, which means it's the reign of Queen Mary I when she restored England temporarily, as it turned out, to the Catholic faith. And she was very involved with the restoration of Worcester Cathedral, which had been denuded under Edward VI as a Catholic place of worship. And it was done in splendid quality, as you can see from this. She paid some of the money. She came and inspected the work while it was being done. So this is Royal Patrick, and it's lurking in the morning of the Paris church in Sutton. You can see if you look, but first of all, that low relief carving is absolutely superb. And James's photograph, which is taken in far more difficult circumstances than it would ever show. It looks very plain and simple than it isn't to get that photograph. I think it brings it up beautifully. And it also has, between the adorbs fishes, the very Catholic symbol, the five wounds of Christ, famous in the 16th century as the symbol of the pilgrimage of grace, but here used 20 years later to show that this is a Catholic cathedral. Alas, in the last few years, a reordering in Sutton Church has moved a lot of these fittings around and lost a few of them, twice the 16th century stuff. And that, I'm afraid, is very burning and it doesn't look after its treasures, but this section at any rate is still there and still where it was put in the 19th century. And it's, for me, the quality is pretty breathtaking. Well, staying with things made of wood. West Bromwich, Oak House. Now those states are not the length of time it took to build, but those are the sort of terminal states for the tree ring dating. So as with pretty well all of our books now, when we publish a new volume, we're able to include the results from dendrochronology, from the dating of buildings, from the timber fabric, and always transformative. Do you want to say something a bit more about this one and the phasing of this house perhaps? Well, I think the phasing now, I think the phasing is probably much closer together than we thought a while ago. So it was generally thought to be built over quite a long period of time, but the dendro dating suggests that it was all done over 20 old years. So it's actually, it's a single time. What actually always takes me about it, it's a black country habit. There was another splendid one in Wendsbridge, Oakwell, which came down in the 1960s. Is that one of the timbered belvedere on the roof. It's a local habit and it was clearly meant to indicate status. The marvelous criss-crossing stunts is decorative stuff. It's quite extraordinary. Otherwise, it's a particularly splendid example of the timber house at the time. There's two complete setbacks. A lot of loads of studying. It was a little bit tweaked at the end of the 19th century, a fairly friendly restoration. But it's, the local firm, Wooden Kendrick, but again, it's an absolutely splendid timber frame house. You wouldn't expect it in the back streets of Wendsbridge. And that brings us to a theme that sort of grand houses are likely places which you can get here. And worth anybody's visit, I would have thought. Am I right that the belvedere is a little bit later? I think, yes, I think it is, sorry. Here I am. I have knocked at the door. I can check it for you if you like now. But it's It is a little bit later. You're going to ask me all that phasing. You are putting it on the spot, but don't worry. The Belvedere dates are between 1647 and 1673. So probably, particularly in this area after the end of the Civil War, because there was quite a lot of Civil War activity around here. So, it's probably like of the 1660s, early 1670s. But it's an absolutely splendid piece. It fits with rest. So it's the timber framing tradition still flourishing, but meanwhile a magnificent house has appeared on the outskirts of Birmingham. I mean, timber framing here is one of the most important things. So, I mean, timber framing here sometimes it's a bit hidden behind part of everything but goes on right into the 18th century as a method of construction. This however is very different, isn't it? Aston Falls, which is absolutely one of the grandest houses of time in England. And it's now stuck in the most unlikely place where James was taking that. The Aston Expressway would have been roaring behind him. And if he'd gone in the Saturday afternoon he wouldn't be able to get there because the Aston Falls football ground would be roaring in a different sense just to the right. It does still have a little bit of park to see something. Perhaps as we look at it now it's a little bit what's the word deceptive symmetrical, central elevation, though most of the elevation was symmetrical. The entrance originally was slightly to one side at the front and that would have made it look a bit different but it is very much the grand Renaissance house starting to appear if only in Jacobian Way. It's innocent of anything but it's a thing. It's been rather a treasure in Birmingham for now the best part of two centuries I think. It was the first grand house that were actually preserved by a local authority when the city council bought it in the 1860s. They were a little bit shamed into it by a lobby which in the end even included Queen Victoria visited but they did and it's been in the city ever since and the interiors have been altered over many years but there's a later phase of interest when it was owned or lived in by James Watt-Julian so there's all that kind of association depends on there as well. Well moving back from domestic or from great house to urbanism let's say return to Wolverhampton that might surprise people that we're about to see his Wolverhampton it perhaps doesn't fit with people's base I don't know. Here we go. Well that's George Street and St John's Church which is William Baker of Portland in 1758-1960. The houses are as so often the church came first and the houses are later 19th century later 18th century I'm sorry. We don't have actually many dates for the individual houses there but you can see a bit of well of its time 1980s-1990s thought to be being built on the right and the building on the corner is by none of the WPG trying to be reasonably respectable but there's a very nice run of original houses with door cases on the left on the south side and there are some left on the right. There's an equally splendid even slightly earlier run of houses in King Street Wolverhampton where the whole of the north side started about 1751 showing it just cut and there's a whole line of Georgian houses right there one side of the street and a couple on the other. The great thing about this is it shows you what there is in Wolverhampton I don't want to repeat myself too much but I do think it's the most underrated town anywhere in England for architecture and if it encourages people to go there it will be a good thing. Perhaps it will encourage the Wolverhampton Council to do something about the horror that you can't see on that close graph which is that in the 70s the south side of the square so if you go down the street and turn left at the end it was opened completely to the ring it does have a bit of church but that's all. But George Street is a splendid set piece and again it's an example I shall keep saying this but it's an example of the things that people don't look at because it's in this area and a lot of the wealth that was sustaining new building like this across the region coming from activities like what we see in this image well that's one of a whole series of watercolours done by Thomas Peplow Wood mostly of churches in Staffordshire in the 1830s very fine topographical artists the nice thing about that is that what's called tips and old church that's what we called it now St John the Evangelist is still there, the whole body of the church was rebuilt and restored to use in 1850 but the tower which is actually sub-gothic of 1683 is still there and you can go and see that tower today the surroundings have changed enormously what's behind it on this picture is what became the gospel gospel ironworks and also rather wonderfully just to the right of the church tower there is a tiny black country coal pit complete with beam engine inside that little cable building and you can see the beam coming out of the bobb hole and there's the shaft just to the left of it so it's a splendid photograph showing you quite a lot of detail of the black country industry but it does show you how in those days industry was everywhere there's even a picture of one house we lost Bentley Hall just before it was demolished in about 1930 with a coal pit complete with winding wheel right on its front lawn and perhaps it was that kind of industrial development which just smothered everything in its wake perhaps it was that that put people off the black country in many years if anything we've gone a little bit too far now you would not recognize the surroundings of this church now the tower as I said is there but there's a road running right across where the front of this this drawing is and everything is 1950s council mostly council but also some private housing the entire area has been sort of reclaimed and rebuilt but this shows you the kind of black country that some of the earlier buildings in this book were actually built in this is what it looked like and places like this were absolutely everywhere on the map there were ironworks and steelworks and manufacturing factories everywhere literally everywhere so a related question then is how do you move stuff around and this shows us one installation from all that curiously there is in fact a hidden canal on that drawing between the church and those factories there is actually a branch canal but this is how they moved things around this is a little bit south here south of the black country south of Birmingham but this extraordinary device was built at the junction of two canals just see the junction house the far background of the photograph through the gap of the lot and it was meant so that one canal company could not have its water stolen water was valuable and important not have it water stolen by another one and so they enforced this guillotine lot as a pair of these with a road bridge in between them by a canal engineer called William Whitmore in 1913 he wrote an account of what he'd done for the canal subscribers at that point in 1813 and said the lot is now complete and you can see it literally is a pair of guillotine gates the mechanism has chains on the right around that pulley there's a big pendulum pit in that brickwork on the left hand side where a great weight goes down so that it works like the pendulum system so it's easily the lot gate is easily erasable and lowerable it is used not much these days if you shut off a length of canal they will drop the guillotine gates and they still work it's all but unique there's a couple of ruined ones left on the Shrewsbury canal in a shocking state but otherwise this extraordinary gate is quite unique it's quite a shocking thing when you see it if you drive down the road and you suddenly see this contraption it's really quite a shock but it does remind you this is even in the southern suburbs of Birmingham Kingsmorton that Birmingham and the Black Country had this huge canal system everything worked by canals even when the railways came they used canals for short distance transport and they had transshipment placements one does survive in Wolverhampton canals were absolutely the essence of Birmingham and Black Country industry main lines like this and little branch canals that went around factories and into all sorts of places so many have disappeared and been completely obliterated by modern re-planning of the generation that you don't realise how many there were and then you come across a splendid monument like this and you suddenly realise how important and how tremendous canals could be and almost contemporary with it this is actually the image on the back jacket of the book from the Black Country side we're back to polite architecture hello I don't know if it's the same as yours but half of William Brooks's name seems to have disappeared off mine we'll just say it so people can it's William Brooks of London it's a complete rebuild of one of the two ancient Paris churches of Dudley St Thomas always locally called Top Church in 1815 to 19 I've been to Dudley more times than I could count when I was young but I'd never been to Top Church until I started writing this book and I was doing it on my total astonishment when I walked into this sumptuous, marvellous interior it's late Georgian Gothic and so often if you look at the details that appears in the vaulting if you're going to find a source it's probably sort of decorated Gothic or something like that but the window tracer is perp there is a big original Georgian painting style painterly stained glass by Joseph Batchelor and just below it there's a wonderful frilly ryridos with little spires at the ends which encloses a relief panel of St Thomas recognising the risen lord by that significant but not that well known early Victorian sculptor Samuel Joseph it's very much a Joseph piece which was in braided hair on the St John the Evangelist figure but it's the splendid proportions and like majestic vaulting and arcade piers and church that really make their impact it's just as you can see had a bit of reordering a lass is involved in the move with the late Pius which were Victorian but had a bit of Georgian work left in them but at least it means that church will have a future it was very very sticky at one point because Dudley has become a very sad town it's lost its shopping to Mary Hill it's through no fault of the councils it's in something of a decline and it is good to see that St Thomas now has a bit of a new life and hopefully that will still mean that one of the decorative features on this splendid structure will still be there if you go into Dudley this is only the inside the spire is a landmark miles away it's right on the Black Country Scar and there are places over in South Birmingham where you can look over and see the spire of the top church if you know where you're looking so it's a major monument someone in the Old English Heritage had the Wittelistic Grade II star quite some years ago so someone noticed it but it was almost completely unknown to a recent plate I remember talking about it to a well-known conservationist not long after I'd gone in and he made a detour to look at it and rang me up the next morning and said it's marvellous isn't it, it is and it's the same story really as the pulpit in Wolverhampton and all the Georgian streets the Black Country has a lot more to offer than you think and this sumptuous church magnificent interior is one bit of it and Georgian clergy need Georgian houses to live in well yes but here comes a little story one of the significant architects around the Black Country at this point was a man called Francis Goodwin Francis Goodwin was not just employed in Birmingham he worked in Manchester he worked in London he pushed himself extremely hard and would send building committees and schemes in the hope of being employed and he had a reputation I think as a bit of a fast operator and he wrote a book called Rural Architecture to cover his designs and he claims the responsibility for this and everybody for many years has accepted that this is Goodwin unfortunately there's a set of drawings surviving in the archives they're very thin but there are a few things left of the peculiar Wolverhampton in 1822 signed and dated by the Birmingham architect Richard Tutin who died very young probably of cholera and there's an affidavit by Tutin saying that he designed this building and this design is his in strong terms so it's actually by Tutin I was aware of Tutin before because he did the old synagogue in Birmingham and he did not the splendid Victorian one around the corner in Bleacher Street this is his predecessor and if you go inside there there's a wonderful revival niche which was originally the niche for the Taurus world so I knew he was good but this is a remarkable design it's a bit out of the ordinary and I've kept that word because it's almost a box but it has that recessed front as so often with neoclassical designs it's got wings that push forward and you've got rather careful use of two orders one for the porch at front and then the major giant order going around the building so it is quite a quite a tight and impressive and considered design but it's not by Francis Goodwin and it's rather curious sort of 200 years after he did it to discover a bit of architecture passing off I'm not saying it wouldn't happen these days but it did happen in the 1820s for a two tin because by the time he took Goodwin he would never do such a thing thoroughly upgrade Pearson yes we'd better move on this is just put in to show how many Victorian churches there are in the area, it's a major area for them and this is one of the most splendid jail piercings to the Highgate taking a picture from the gallery like this shows I think Pearson's unusual proportions he used the whole conception very well completely stone vaulted all the way through no frilly ornament or anything but a magnificent structure and one splendidly important if you walk into it it has the opposite effects of Peter's in Rome you think it's bigger than it is if you start walking up the nave suddenly you're at the crossing before you know where you are because Pearson has handled the proportions we have some wonky my Victorian Gothic church and then later on was the arts and crafts masters like W. H. Bidlake but church architecture is important because so often in so many communities the church was the one place for architectural statement and non-conformist architecture too oh yeah this is it's the last remaining really of a splendid series of chapels until the Edwardian period the last great period of modern formality at the time of the Louisville landslide in 1906 and this wonderful thing which has a central dome and two domes either side of the entrance outside it was Methodism Triumphant in 1890 and 1901 it's recently closed and is now a problem building but you can see the central dome there the mosaics the one thing I failed to find and did try was who designed that wonderful live heart deco maps that go right down the centre of the chapel but you can see it's all on the grand list scale the gallery seating there is original the original queues downstairs there's an enormous the words come straight out of my head what we call the great modern pulpits that get right across the end and then there's a gallery behind it where they're all quite important and it is the last survivor there were others at this period and they've come down in relatively recent years so Darlaton Street which was an institution in Wolverhampton even 20 years ago Darlaton Street is now a very rare survivor but you can see the quality of it the quality of those capitals, the plaster work everything was done to get the very finest they could and Arthur Marshall who's normally remembered for designing workouts he's responded to this with this splendid design with the dome and the vaulting and the towers and the central dome out and cube were outside and by this time the arts and crafts gang are getting into their stride it's odd that this is only three years after Darlaton Street because splendid as Darlaton Street is there's nothing of this about it this is one of the great Birmingham Arts and Crafts architects C. Baitman Charles Baitman he and his friend W. H. Bidlake were the finest and this wonderful house with its tile hanging all in very careful diminishing course it's stone tile it's not one tile either if the colours look different even now after a century of weathering it's because of these three different stones and it's up to date in a way that gable on the left with the semi-circuit bay under the big the big square gable above it shows that Baitman has been looking at buildings by C. F. A. Roysey it's the first scheme for dawning that is the source of that and there's something about that great sweep of tile work right across the centre of the house which suggests that he has seen some of the very early houses of Frank Lloyd Wright I think that sweep certainly comes from there so there's this gorgeous house you don't normally see this, the entrance front is quite nice but this is the garden front the owners here were very nice have a bit of trouble with owners elsewhere but the owners here were very nice so you know there's this Marcus garden front I don't know what more you can say about it you just sort of sit there if it's absolutely for people watching this is Brynteg and it's a southern cold field yeah can't see the castle it's happened again this is Christchurch, Adam Rock and the architecture of Pobbys 1937 so still arts and crafts but things are changing aren't they well the building arts and crafts goes on because it was very much a tradition of designing that comes out of people in the 19th century early 20th century like Letherby and before him Philip Webb so there's a concentration on quite simple forms there's a tremendous concentration on materials like the stone the stone tiling we've just seen and here absolutely lovely brickwork and architects specified that in some detail Hobbes has a signature brick bond which is English garden wall bond with three rows of structures and you find it in very nearly all these buildings but you can see you can bring it up to date with this sculpture by William Boyer from the porch which is certainly sort of written by 1920s early 30s sculptors it couldn't be any earlier than that it's from a piratic in the primitive approach and the great big cross with the end of the day in the middle of the top yet this near primitive sculpture is placed in a porch that just comes out very slightly around that's a dot of the cap to particularly Worcestershire Norman architecture these people were scholars they knew their historic buildings and you'll find Norman torches in Worcestershire where they literally just come out of the wall slightly that framed all around and that's from there the other thing about it is Hobbes' curious way of designing which comes I think from in the end from Philip Webb and this is where it has something to say where the pieces the different pieces of the design are very distinct if you go inside there it's even more astonishing with big round arches rather European rather German in fact as this westward front is for the nave but then a completely different design for the chance of the time being to the Canberra and roof and he very deliberately has this kind of slightly disjudged pretty dis-designed it was the way some of those people didn't it but I find it very impressive and meanwhile we have something perhaps not quite modern movement but certainly a modern aesthetic beginning to arrive oh yes that's pretty close to modern movement isn't it and this is another discovery this is in Sutton where I was brought up and I had no idea this house was there I had a room and had a normal shop I wish I had known it earlier because I was in touch with Red Edmunds before he died he lived in the 98 this was very smart for me this is Jackson Jackson and Edmunds I'm assuming you can see the captions but it's Ten Beach Hill Road it's by Jackson Edmunds 1937 they became a very big firm and some people have been less than kind to some of their later work Clare Hartwell was not kind to their very town hall in the Manchester volume but here they were young there's a freshness about the design there's some nice little detail that was really working in the balconies the ironwork which is perhaps the only period feature there is the brittle window goes around the corner and it's remarkably untouched outside I think the door has been replaced but that's about it the crystals are all there the rendering looks absolutely gorgeous it's obviously kept up beautifully and there's this perfect little almost modern movement house sitting among a lot of Tudor and Spanish-y 1930s houses in a suburban road in Sutton it really does stand out but you might guess looking at it that it's young men's architecture it's got that kind of freshness to it OK, ready for some brutalism? Yeah I guess in a sense that this is not local brutalism this is national stuff but Richard Gilbert Scott the fourth generation of the Great Family as part of the practice was still called Charles Good Scott Partners and he did two splendid churches in East Birmingham they're in the most unlikely places Catholic churches though in the 1960s and this is our Lady of Christians in Tar Cross Tar Cross is part of Sheldon and you can see it has these extraordinary curved ribs that go almost like like sort of curtains frozen into concrete and break piers on either side but when you look at the plan the unexpected thing about particularly about Tar Cross but also the other church which is in Sheldon proper is how formal it is there's a sense in which this is a a Beaux Arts building in brutalist dress however splendid the brutalist dress is and how convincing it is very convincing but it's a tremendously formal design centralised in the middle where the altar was brought forward and the congregation surrounded it which is the the Liverpool Cathedral style of doing things but it's also tremendously formal design allied with this radical use of concrete expressive use of concrete which is the form of brutalism that's absolutely me I'm gushing so the next one I know is a favourite too concrete or concrete framed well this is put into I think to say that not everything about the 70s was bad the 70s have bad press these days and not even every 70s shopping centre was bad I think you were a bit surprised when I wanted this as an illustration of Simon I could understand it if you wouldn't expect it I've seen the lightest thing I've seen the building and we had the launch it was very impressive it's ducked very carefully into a historic town centre this is the very narrow what's in front of it James must have been right up against the buildings on the other side I don't know how he took the photograph it faces on this side the very narrow high streets in Stourbridge and the other side in fact comes out right opposite the parish church St Thomas, the Georgian parish church so it has to be on its best behaviour and it has all these fun details like little box out windows not all the same design and these very wonky dormers that always sort of go box-sided and you also see that the canopy where any sort of dull architect would have done it plain actually has these little V's in it underneath so every detail is worth looking at it's by two architects called Byrne Crofts Jeff Daniel and Harry's partnership who were a big commercial firm in Birmingham in the 70s and even early 80s but of the big commercial firms this is leaving aside firms like John Mayden's of the big commercial firms they really were the best they did some lovely building all the jokes still come off is the way I've put it they meant it to sort of mute you and lift your spirits a bit and I think it still does that now and yeah who says a 1970 shopping centre can't be fun well I said there was one photo not taken by James and we're about to see it so this is our last photo in this section this is where it gets really rather painful it's perhaps not the best way to end but something has to be said Birmingham I have big part in this in my past so perhaps I'm a bit more excited but Birmingham had a bad reputation in the 60s and 70s for demolishing good architecture and completely wrecking the place particularly because of a city engineer called Herbert Manzoni who frankly said that there was little of real value in Birmingham's architecture and the whole area needed to be new and it needed to look completely different that was his attitude and that's what we've got and in the 80s and 90s there was a movement away from that but we seem now to have returned to it pretty solidly and this is the splendid Central Library by the John Mayden Design Group I hope the best building put up in Birmingham in the last well it's now slightly over it was going up exactly 50 years ago but certainly the best building in its time very much the brink of this thing but again rather like the Sheldon Church there's more than a touch of four more Beaux-Arts planning behind that building and this is it under demolition in 2016 these are two that they actually sliced through the centre of the great Ziggurat these signs that went up and demolished it from the centre outwards and for some of us it was the point where Birmingham really well just lost the pot again there is a planning department I'm sorry to use such strong language but I really do think that they become a gang of Philistine thugs excuse me I don't think one can say one can use less strong language there's a free-for-all in high buildings, literally free-for-all there's an extra anyway you want 50 stories, you want it here let's have it here there is an extraordinary application approved for the Dingham and Derigent area and allows the demolition of more than half the buildings in the area it covers which is not how you deal with the conservation area for those of us who did try and change Birmingham attitudes in the 80s when we had a remarkable City Council leader Sir Richard Knowles and a very good director of planning Les Sparks so watch what's going on now is very very painful the redeeming part is that Wolverhampton doesn't seem to Wolverhampton doesn't seem to have fallen victim to this and its new development around the town around the station has a genuine sense of urban scale and buildings that fit together but Birmingham I just think Birmingham's lost it again and its usual habit when it's criticized is to loudly beat its drum and say it's exciting and wonderful and all that's going on but the reality is that fine architecture and good town planning is just disappearing down a level well maybe people will have questions to ask for the full picture I should say at this point we do have a photo in their new book of the replacement libraries which is on a different site and just a building of notes at least so I suppose at that point we move through and say goodbye for now and welcome James Davis we'll talk about his work on the photography for the book James hello I can't hear you yet can you hear me now, are we good? very good well I will move through quite a few images perhaps if you say when you want me to move on I'll stay in control but the photography you were doing a lot of it was happening during the pandemic and the lockdown so just to show the first one I wonder if that had implications for how you were working yeah absolutely did I mean we couldn't go out for a long time so on the very first day after restrictions were lifted I was out shooting for the volume and I mean exteriors only for obvious reasons and yes those silver linings came into play you could crisscross Birmingham north south east west in the sort of fraction of the time that it would normally take and well actually that makes a huge difference to your productivity and then in real terms and you know I feel terrible saying this but you know veneer deserted streets weren't unhelpful so it's interesting because actually you know this is a photographic inset completely underpinned with evidence of the pandemic you can see it from the lack of vehicles here on George street you know which we've already seen but if you look closely the parking meters are covered over next slide please you know again here at the Victoria law courts by Ingress Bell and Aston Webb you know there's normally teeming with people and vehicles next slide please yeah well this is the black horse pub by France's Goldsburg 1929 again completely normally teeming with vehicles and I think there's another view Simon yeah I mean this is the age 38 this is one of the sort of main arterial roads into Birmingham completely deserted built for the motorist in fact built for the motorist absolutely built for the motorist next next picture please and then yes the University of Birmingham Ashley and Straff Kona building here by HKPA 1961 to 4 Andy describing it as full of panache here you know completely deserted devoid of students next slide please and then conversely interiors which were incredibly tricky to arrange and it's a great tribute to the many churches and houses who opened their doors under extraordinary pressures and you know grateful to them all and the evidence is telling you can see it in the nave here with the sort of lack of seating this is St. Matthew in Warsaw by Francis Goodwin 1820 to 21 next slide please it's striking there don't seem to be any chairs down there at ground floor level was it does it have stackable chairs or was the things that had completely reordered for the pandemic and this was happening a lot in a lot of churches the seating arrangements would either have lots of red tape or there were pairs here and freeze there and very untidy looking so those have all been swept back and did that involve you in having to remove and replace lots of tape absolutely it did I think we've said it before photography is 1% inspiration and 99% moving the furniture and that is so true next slide please yeah well this is Asmetic Barbs by Chester Button 1933 and again absolutely no swimmers next slide please Andy reminds us this is effectively a building at risk or is about to become one because there's a new pool being built in connection with the Commonwealth Games and it will effectively supplant this swimming pool so a new use of some sort will be needed and they're tricky buildings to find new uses for that wonderful roofline wonderful roofline next slide please Simon and then yeah you know there were funerals going on when my shoots were sometimes sandwiched between services this being some Edgar and the monument to Henry Gressel of 1700 so you know there's a photographic tone in this volume that might not be obvious when viewing but does be quietly of a period relating to the pandemic the curious thing is because your photography has such a strong character and quality I wasn't having any of these thoughts really because it was exciting when we start to see the images but you tend to have the ability to make the bad stuff go away anyway so both the positives and the negatives of the pandemic they sort of balance each other out perhaps yeah it's just very interesting there is just a little subtle undertone that the pandemic was present when these images were being taken so next one please it's just one about Jamesy so we're going to talk about cars and the lack of cars and the lack of people and that's just down to patients and despite my best efforts I very often fail you know I return again and again to the same building should vehicles which I think are transient be blocking the view this is the mid 19th century royal school by Joseph Manning and Wolverhampton and a very good example here of where I must have visited five maybe six times before I got a view without any cars so that actually means turning up at the right time of day for the elevation making sure the sky as you'd wanted and then being defeated by the parked cars and that might happen even on a Sunday afternoon mid-summer so sometimes you know it's the images that you don't take that lead to the success of the building and that makes sense next slide please Simon yes this one's not in the book is it this isn't in the book the building is and I just wanted to put this in because you know it shows that you can occasionally encourage cars to move on this is the legal and general assurance building from 1 to 1932 and it's a really difficult shot to light because facing northwest there's only a narrow passage of time when the sun hits the elevation before dipping behind the building's opposite so it's central Birmingham parking space is at a premium the shot has to be taken between 5 30 and 6 15 in the afternoon when the light breaks across the frontage so any cars as we can see here are going to completely ruin the shot on the left I've got the ubiquitous white van I'm standing in the foyer of the office building opposite with a security guard who's given me 15 minutes so all I can do is ring the number on the side of the van and plead with Fiona to see if they'll kindly move it so here I'm reliant on three elements the limited light the goodwill of a security chap and the van driver picking up the phone and hopefully being encouraged to move the vehicle on and have we got the next picture it worked yeah I got lucky the van driver picks up the phone he's sympathetic to the cause and it's those equal parts all combining to finally bring a picture together and making all the difference excellent shall we talk about churches or the other churches and the question of lighting it's so often about light it is you know with almost every church I'll try and weigh up the tonal range to the eye and then try and compute the equivalent to the camera's sensor and the very different things and to then render the information equally may or may not determine whether I need to add extra light so in almost every scenario I mean I'd rather use just available light as here Pearson's and Albin but much of the time actually you're supplementing the ambient light with additional strobe lighting to fill in those dark shadows so with the ultimate aim of providing more architectural information next slide please just for those who don't know the mysteries of the craft with if you're supplementing the artificial sorry the natural light there are you placing equipment in various positions around the church or exactly so exactly so and sometimes that can be quite blatant as we're going to see in the next picture but usually it's quite subtle and just in very isolated shadow areas so next slide please Simon yeah you know photography of course has its own language and what I'm trying to do is eke out as many layers as possible and sometimes that has the effect of flattening the image as we can see here this is the Oscott College by Potter and Pugin 1836 to 1837 and you can see that lack of depth next slide please and then just as you're saying Simon you know at other times you're merely illuminating what the architect has provided that daylight is incapable of delivering next slide please so this is the Cemetery Chapel this is Bidlake Cemetery Chapel yet in Hansworth 1909 to 10 and next slide please comes along so what I'm doing here I'm literally adding light to the vaulting to hopefully enhance the reader's understanding and appreciation next slide please and almost exactly the same again here at the oratory of St. Philip Neri by E. Doran Webb this is 1903 to 1909 where I've just lit the sanctuary with its mix of exotic materials which otherwise that would have been just dark so just filling in those dark shadow areas next slide again please we had the same subject in the city guide and you were the photographer for the most of the city guide images I think so this was a second a second go a second go and I think in the city guide we had the view from the balcony this is much lower and we're getting much more ceiling for our money next slide please Simon, yeah well we've already seen this our Lady Helper Christians and here I just had to trickle light across these concrete ribs at the top to render their shape and form whilst exposing equally for the main space and then holding the exposure for the wonderful stained glass so it's subtle stuff but you're trying to bring out information all the time and while you're in these churches to take one shot usually the opportunity to take some additional shots not even necessarily alternative shots just do some good photos must present itself it does and if I could flip that just slightly and quote Andy Foyle actually you know author of the Bristol City Guide and North Somerset Volume and he used to say sort of I wouldn't photograph any subject unless I could make it work meaning can I do justice to the building and that's really important you know it's actually have a front cover of this volume came into play you would ask me to photograph Holy Trinity Church in Heathtown Wolverhampton but it proved nigh on impossible given the surrounding trees and you know I completely failed I failed with lots of other pictures too but walking from the church can we have the next slide please yeah walking from the church the spire here you can even see it being set off with these wonderful arms houses also by the same architect Edward Banks of 1850 so very much an image created here from one that completely failed next slide please yeah I mean another example of tree coverage this is the Galton Bridge by Telford 1829 where I chose to shoot it specifically in winter when the tree coverage the tree canopy was much less so it's allowing some element of transparency and then in order to lead the bridge further I photographed it at Twilight and then lit it with an array of lighting from various positions in the end actually next slide please that's quite a lot of kits then is it are we yeah it's a lot of kit and I'm parked about half a mile away I've dragged the first set on the site and hid it gone back to the car half a mile backward for second load half a mile and then start creating starting to make an image and then pack up take a photograph and reverse that process having to hide some of it again indeed so must have felt the lack of of an assistant sometimes indeed indeed but next slide please to the book Andy and I kind of discarded that image because we felt that this tilted bridge this is the engine arm aqueduct 1827 to 9 with these wonderful sort of delicate proportions actually did a much better job next slide please I then also sort of take the opportunity to photograph further elements of the building you know knowing well a they'll be a useful record and be occasionally being used instead of a shot being asked for so this is Richard 20 men's Emmanuel church of 1954 to 6 where the general view was chosen for the volume but next slide that didn't stop me sort of recording these wonderful alter candles and next slide please and of course the sanctuary itself with this panel walnut so those extra shots you know they're important that there will be a good record next picture please and then this is Santa alfish in Solihull rich in so much stained glass I'm recording the arts and crafts glass here by Bertram Lamplu but in the same chapel on the north side next slide please so just as you this is the first Solihull subject to come up and people are often interested in the boundaries in the divisions of our books the long story really but we had to divide Warwickshire we couldn't try and put Birmingham and Warwickshire into one book and it didn't seem to make good sense to split from a black country either so we have ended up with a book which takes from three historic counties from Warwickshire chiefly Birmingham then the Staffordshire and Worcestershire historically parts of the black country but Solihull was the sort of leftover because it seemed to belong with Birmingham in so many ways and it also made a better balance for the size of the book as against the Warwickshire book so that area of Solihull district which is on the Birmingham side of the motorway if you're if you're keeping up is included with this book so it is Birmingham and the black country and a bit of Solihull being terribly literal next slide next slide so we have that wonderful glass by Bertram Lamplu but yes in the same chapel this wonderful glass window to the pilgrims through the ages by Lawrence Lee these wonderful two little panels at the very base which I've blown up either side well worth going to look at and next slide please Simon I think this is our last one yeah well you know we showed our lady help of Christians and we've seen the interior here's a detail of the exterior these thrilling sweeping copper ribs rising up it does go to show doesn't it just how difficult but how well judged composing a photo in set can be and I'd certainly like to thank you and Andy for your great skill in providing such comprehensive riches so well yeah thank you very much can you see me and hear me as they say thank you all of you so much that was fantastic both in terms of your credible knowledge Andy and the visuals absolutely stunning and to learn all about the secrets of pandemic photography I suppose in the sense it made your job kind of a bit easier to clear it off but it was extraordinary because it's something that we would take for granted that buildings will be cleared and imagine you have a whole crew of people bossing people around and telling them to move their cars and do God knows what but it's not like that of course in real life there are people because buildings are about people for better or worse the core of it Birmingham and Wolverhampton kind of dominated in a sense the conversation one the underrated underdog and the other the victim of institutional Philistinism in a sense Wolverhampton good to see a bit of Wolverhampton kind of on the cover of the book I don't know if that was a deliberate decision but there was a lot of questions here and I just made me think about the one place I do know reasonably well Wolverhampton my sister lives in Teton Hall on Teton Hall Road I've been going there for donkeys years and drinking the beer and banks and all that sort of thing chapel ash and my first impression of Wolverhampton is it's a plumbing ring road I wonder whether the which are all named after saints it's hilarious you know all the different exits are named after different churches and saints is that one of the reasons why Wolverhampton is so difficult to get a hand along do you think because I have struggled for years to think where is the centre of Wolverhampton is there an answer is an easy answer to that I think that one can you hear us as a great Wolverhampton I mean I'm a great fan of Wolverhampton and it is the reason why Wolverhampton has as you say very right underrated it probably is the ring road you just have to accept that the ring road is there but that there's an awful lot to see both inside and outside it contrasted with Birmingham I mean the equivalent of Wolverhampton is Queen Square that's the old centre and many times called High Green and most of that's still there the square is there the statue of Prince Al was on his horse but the buildings rather a clash of buildings on the one side but a nice 18th century house that actually has a 16th century timber back on the north side and the little street going up to St Peter's church which is called Lidge Gates all that's still there which is very unlike Birmingham they knocked down one chunk of the city centre for what's called the Mounder centre and even that was rather good when it was put up it was Stanley Sellers and a very decent design and we've missed about it since but a lot of it's still there apart from the Georgian townscape there's some splendid Victorian townscape in Litchford Street very fine Victorian buildings by the art gallery by Chapman there's a splendid bank by the A.S.I. Nicola Goodman building that's illustrated in the book so there's half a dozen streets of splendid Victorian art plus those Georgians and you think that the apart from the ring road that the town planners in Wolverhampton have been rather more sympathetic than their equivalents in Birmingham oh yes far more there was the slight problem that you have those the sort of what's I say the reaction against modernism and town planning and all that but the slightly focus reaction of the 90s meant that the one building they did demolish was the splendid retail market in 1960 which had concrete shell walls the only ones in my area but were so modest in scale that you know if you wanted challenging architecture that was also friendly that was it but otherwise under things got straight out of my head the wonderful Wolverhampton plan who did this it'll come back in a minute but they were very good at hanging on the buildings they have the other place where they have Tattie is Dudley borough so Starbridge is like Wolverhampton in miniature there's a terrible ring road an absolutely horrendous ring road but if you get inside it to the town centre or you start looking at areas outside there's an enormous amount to see and if you can somehow blot out from your consciousness a bit of the ring roads then the rest of the place isn't really good the problem is the middle of the public transport of London people still have to use cars so ring roads are here but the second medieval city wall isn't it once you've actually penetrated you can start to appreciate it we've got questions in the Q&A here if I may I'll just take the first one that came in as a kind of question it was from John Pevelly and he says thank you for your splendid book historic buildings and some fairly recent today, lack of maintenance lack of use as a broad generalisation are historic buildings in the black country and I know we've talked about Birmingham are they in reasonably good health appreciated and in good use yes and no the black country has a it's certainly had over the last 30-40 years a great fascination with its own history it has a certain defined channel so everything to do with canals for example canal architecture locks canal warehouses the bombarded warehouses at Stourbridge all that kind of thing that's well understood but it tends to be the slightly less obvious stuff and sometimes the polite stuff that gets missed and certainly the modernist stuff like I mentioned with the retail market in Wolverhampton but the traditional what's left of the industrial architecture and the canals then there's a lot of feeling for that and that kind of tradition there's a bit about obviously the black country is a conservative way conservative small sea way and other things so churches are always a thing the church is the centre of the town or village in the black country which is why I think I did so many church descriptions and Simon starts to think they were getting out of town slightly and it's a village and it is a village scape people know from which community they came they know it's history they know it's little local authorities which disappeared in the 60s while I was writing the book there was a celebratory meeting 40 years since the extinction of Amborg Co-Termin District which was smaller than the one but 40 years after it disappeared people still wanted to celebrate it quite a party just asking another kind of question about how you write these books because yes it's full of fact it's full of information but it's also full of opinion and when you find something you love obviously the temptation is to write a lot about it or to talk about it if you find something you really dislike is there a temptation to pass over it and I was very struck by I have to say I've never been to Villa Park not a Villa supporter but I was very struck by the most celebrated football grounder in West Midlands and an architectural disaster and I wonder whether one ever attempted to sort of unpick something like that I think well why is it so awful or is it best to say but I think to be honest if you push Villa fans of my friends up against the wall they would probably they would probably agree with that statement there was quite a campaign to say the Archibald I'm terrible with surnames these days and the surnames got straight out of my head famous football grounder famous football stadium architect who did the hold hands down Archibald Leech I can't hear you Simon Archibald Leech I guess Archibald Leech but they had this Archibald Leech sound what you've now got is a kind of repro of its centre in a much bigger and very bland modern sound which even comes out over the road on a cantilever in a way it shouldn't because it's on the Aston Wall side so I think there was a lot of upset when the Archibald Leech sound came down but it came down football clubs and championships are owned by quite rich people they have their own ideas about how they're going to develop them and develop them they will I think funny enough it's the same as elsewhere if I was going to say the one that's slightly better than the others it would be wolves look at the uncocked at least they have a bit of consistency but the others really are very poor and it's sad because we lost things like the Archibald Leech sound I'm just looking down questions here this is Ian Corwood is it he asks about where you place the new library among the best new buildings in the period between New York City guide of 2005 this is Birmingham and the buildings of England in 2022 the new library building how I place it well it's clearly it was a very prestigious piece of work but Mechanu didn't have the free hand that you may think they have they did not do the standard architect's job the contractors were effectively decided for them the process was something they didn't control and the result though it's very good does show that those kind of limitations it's not actually very well cited the site for it on Centenary Square was always the place that was going to be the central courtyard of all the municipal schemes from the 30s through to the 60s and the buildings either side would assume that you go back at that point and you don't so the building to anyone who knows the square I think the building always looks in the wrong place and its form was dictated by this rather constricted site so it's much sort of it digs into the earth by two stories it goes up perhaps higher than they would have wanted so they were constrained in many ways that said the interior has some wonderful special effects where you go up from the ground floor right up to the reference floors in that respect it's a replacement for the wonderful special effects in the made in library and I think it was certainly worth the last photograph in the book and James was a very nice one and so they've triumphed over some of those things but it was always a building built within constraints site contract question here about I guess it's a yes and hope with this one and John Hink says does the splendid art deco theater with Dudley Hippodromes currently sadly threatened with demolition featuring the volume well it does I couldn't get in so it's only in the outside which I'm afraid it's it's only Robinson who did some very good commercial work in Birmingham and later on extraordinary sort of American those arts brook this thing for the West Bromwich Building Society in West Bromwich High Street which is now a bit of a problem building because they moved out of it but it is I mean the exterior is very impressive in a very blunt way that's its problem it doesn't have anything to sort of be superficially attractive it's this great square block just with rounded corners you'll see a detail it is loved by many people in Dudley it's horrible feeling it's getting close to the end of the road my fellow contributors Paul Collins the industrial of this book who is part of the group that are trying to save it would be horrified when I said that I do hope someone can happen to it but it's getting pretty difficult council have no voting to demolish in a historic England won't list it which is sad and it's going to be very difficult but it is it will be great Boston's up as it goes and I'm very sorry about that thank you Julia Laarden she said what about black country pubs I've been visiting a relative in Walsall recently it strikes me that Walsall has rather a lot splendid a lot of Victorian pubs some well cared for some people to be struggling I'm thinking of St Matthews in particular I don't know if there are some very nice pubs around the centre of Walsall the Barrow Arms by Hips and Magers particularly nice one it has some of its original interior and that's so often in black country it's never really been noticed as that I don't think it's listed but it's by very good fan of architects in town and it has some very classy warding fittings left inside black country pubs tend to be smaller and one of the sad bits in the book though the description is still there as it was before it closed in 2013 was this extraordinary and humble pub I found in Dunnington called Shakespeare and it was a beer act beer house I can remember doing the beer act in school in 1813 as liberalising the beer market to stop people drinking beer and suddenly the number of pubs to a beer house is tripled in five years this was one of them and it had its 1830 or 1935 arrangement it had the original doors in the corridor the tiles the bar I think the bar counter was a slightly later addition and the room at the back had some cupboards firing flanking the fireplace again probably some 1856 there where all the cups went for the sporting teams it was a complete period I took James Darwin the Georgian group in there and he had the same reaction as me first of all why have you brought me in here it was so plain enough ten minutes you start touching the furniture to make sure it's real and that's now closed it's someone's house I know Dunnington's observation of it has their eye on it and has told the owner how important everything is including when I gather mostly upstairs but it has a very fragile future and she's utterly humble but quite extraordinary there we are I don't know a lot about the pubs there but I remember memorably it was the first time I ever came across a drink called mixed half bitter and half mild great invention my Birmingham uncle said that was called Mickey Mouse that's a bit of love this one I really are thank you can I ask on behalf of Stephen Richards it's an interesting question I never thought about it when you start writing these guides do you start with Pebsner's words or do you start with your own and use his when you see fit speaking of mixed it was a bit mixed in Birmingham because when we wrote the city guides we were encouraged to take a new look on the building so there isn't a great deal of Pebsner in it and then those got carried over to the new book but it won't look like it if you read it but I think everywhere else every other church entry started with Pebsner's entry and then got really quite knocked around and extended and altered I don't think Black Country was Pebsner's happiest place to be he wasn't alone in that he really has but you know in the 1960s and early 70s when he was going around it was still a very dirty and industrial place and he might not have found it very attractive to visit and the buildings were covered in dirt as well so they weren't always as attractive as they ought to be so a lot of things had to be written there and even around Brun he seems to be having a bit of an off day on rural parish and I thought it would be easy going and I discovered that his entry is all about, it runs too theories about the church, 900 which are last stand up when you look at it very closely and so that had to be me written but honestly Pebsner is at the bottom of this as is Andrew Wedgwood for Birmingham it may not look like it but he knows certainly is there, I can remember when that book came out and I said at the launch when I was there I still have my original copy that I bought when I was a schoolboy and it's in a shocking state but I still got it it's much cherish indeed I'm going to ask something on behalf of Helen Cobby this came in earlier she says I'm really enjoying the presentations are the speakers able to say anything about the Barbara Institute the Barbara Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham do you want to say anything about the Barbara Institute it's a wonderful it's a wonderful building in that sort of semi-modern late 1930s style it's Robert Atkinson who I think was the architecture choice for all sorts of cultural things at the time very much the kind of when you go to on the one hand it sort of bows arts but the front is is resolutely asymmetrical with the entrance at one side the detailing and the quality of the finishes particularly inside would are sumptuous and it has some very nice sculpture outside by Gordon Herrick from the Birmingham group who I was very glad to find one other piece by him in Walsall which is lettering but obviously done and that's a collection of how he came to know of Herrick's I don't know it was a very fine sculpture but yeah it's a lovely building the only problem is the roof which Professor Hemage Miles insisted on putting on it in the 1980s which I wish they'd take off because it apparently doesn't work but yeah otherwise it's wonderfully kept up and it's also a subject of Birmingham now I think it's also the Art Gallery of Choice 20 years ago I'd have taken a visit to see the Pre-Rap Lights in the town centre and now I'd take it to the barber yeah it's I'm not going to get on the subject of Birmingham Art Gallery because it's a fantastic collection there's no doubt about it but it has been through the wars there's no doubt about it but both one of the reasons why Birmingham is England's or Britain's second city is because of the quality and not just the buildings but the art and the culture and it's extraordinary from that point of view we're going to wind up in a minute or two but I just wanted to ask Simon and James if there's anything you wanted to add or say or comment upon before we wrap it up well just on that last question we have included a photo of the Barber Institute so it's up there with the other highlights said James no if you don't know Birmingham you don't know Wolverhampton and you don't know the black country by the book go and visit there's never been a better opportunity and as I say the illustrations are great justice to it I mean that's one of the things about not just the quality of the scholarship which is stupendous but actually I've sort of flipped through the place again earlier today and your of how you took them but also they're beautifully arranged I think that's Simon earlier today the way in which they've actually been put together there's a great deal of thought and even I can see that looking casually so I think without further ado and on behalf of everybody who's joined us tonight and I'd like to thank all of you who've joined us it's been an illuminating and splendid presentation from all our guest speakers and so as you know lots of things happening at the Paul Mellon Centre if you look at our events page we were in the middle of a series of public lectures devoted to medieval art at the moment there are still three to go and they're available online so please do look at that and everything else that we've got coming up now Simon I guess what's next in the pipeline next come is Surrey Division of Surrey which will be out I think the schedule month is November of this year so we'll be back again towards the end of the year I live in Surrey so I'm probably on home ground a little bit there reporting here from Richmond that's JLC Surrey we don't count okay well thanks to everybody and I think on that note we'll say goodnight and thank you very much goodbye, thank you