B is for Bullring
Built at a cost of over £500 million, Bullring is Birmingham’s newest and most spectacular shopping centre. Bullring is situated right at the very heart of the city centre and incorporates an area the size of 26 football pitches. Promoted as ‘the most exhilarating city retail experience anywhere in Europe’, the Bullring development has also heralded the next significant stage in the recent renaissance of Birmingham: gone are the drab looking architectural constructions and the dreary inner ring road of the 1960s and in it’s place is a vast, glass covered environment filled with some of the most trendy and contemporary shops, boutiques and restaurants in the UK – a place where visitors are encouraged to “shop, eat or just be”.
But in the euphoric enlightenment of our new transcendental retail experience, let us not forget that Bullring’s predecessor (known with a touch less sophistication as the ‘Bull Ring Centre’) was considered to be just as modern and just as innovative in it’s own day. When it was opened by the Duke of Edinburgh on 29th May 1964, the Bull Ring Centre and it’s vicinity was celebrated as one of Britain’s most revolutionary examples of urban planning. With around 32,500 m² of supermarkets, shops and markets, the Bull Ring Centre was one of the world’s largest enclosed shopping centres outside the USA.
When the shopping centre opened in the sixties, television adverts described it in celebratory terms as “the High Street under cover” and by the early 1970s it was attracting half a million shoppers a week. On Saturday 6th December 1969, the Bull Ring Shopping Centre was so busy that the police had to be called to unblock a pedestrian gridlock which extended from the steps at the junction of New Street and High Street, right along the ramp next to the Bull Ring Market and round into Manzoni Gardens. The people-jam was caused by too many shoppers trying to get into the Bull Ring Shopping Centre itself and the subsequent blockage was so serious that there was real danger of injury, with many people in the crowd becoming physically unwell and distressed. The police used loud hailers and diversionary tactics to re-route shoppers away from this great human impasse, but similar scenes were a regular occurrence throughout the peak years of the centre’s popularity.
By the 1980s however, the Bull Ring was looking fatigued and lacklustre; by the nineties it was more like a retail ghost town than a retail experience and the only migratory souls going there to “just be” were the pigeons.
But if 1964 seems like ancient history for many of us these days, the story of the Bull Ring site actually goes back much, much further and is closely linked to the growth of the city itself. Brummie historian Professor Carl Chinn refers to the Bull Ring as one of ‘the three constants’ of the centre of Birmingham, dating back to the days of the original market town which began near a crossing point across the River Rea nearly one thousand years ago. The other two constants, Carl Chinn reminds us, are St Martin’s church and The Old Crown inn at Digbeth.
The aforementioned ‘retail experience’ first came into being officially on the Bull Ring site in 1166 when the Lord of the Manor, Peter de Bermingham was granted a license for a market for the sale of livestock. In 1251, his descendant William de Bermingham was granted the right to hold a Whitsun Fair by Henry III and in 1309 his son, another William, proved that his ancestors levied tolls in a market they ran in Birmingham before Hastings. The Norman descended de Berminghams may well have been carrying on a tradition dating back to Saxon times.
Typical scene in the 1990s Bull Ring market (photo by Pete)
As the market on the de Bermingham manor grew and generation after generation of drovers, traders and merchants came in from the surrounding Warwickshire countryside, year in and year out, to sell their livestock, their wares and their produce, the town itself grew and expanded around it’s central market place. The importance of the town’s market was mentioned by a number of writers throughout it’s history, such as Leland who referred to Birmingham as ‘a good market town’ in 1538. Another writer of the 16th century refers to the town having streets lined with stalls for fishmongers, butchers and tanners, with separate Corn, Welsh and English Markets.
In 1795, the historian William Hutton mentions the Bull Ring by name in his commentary which details the great diversity of traders in the town. Market trading activities had expanded so much in the centre of Birmingham by the turn of the nineteenth century that they were becoming a danger and a nuisance; so in 1806 the street commissioners declared that market traders were to be restricted to the Bull Ring.
A beast market opened at Smithfield in 1817 (on the site of the moated manor house of the de Berminghams) and in 1835 a Market Hall was built nearby between Philip Street and Bell Street, providing accommodation for 600 stalls. A fish market was opened in Bell Street in 1869. During the 19th century the town’s markets were consolidated around the St Martin’s area, with a ‘dead meat market’ opening in Jamaica Row in 1851 and a vegetable market gradually taking over Smithfield as the slaughter of livestock decreased.
New Bullring - photo by Pete
In 1940 the much loved Market Hall, with it’s Doric columns was gutted by fire caused by German bombers, but in spite of this huge loss, this particular era remains a golden age of the Bull Ring for most older Brummies. This was the era of the old Bull Ring, when flower sellers, hawkers and wardrobe dealers lined the cobbled incline from St Martin’s to New Street. It was an era when traditional barrow boys cut a path through the throngs, weaving their way between street escapologists and soap box preachers. By the 1950’s the old Bull Ring site also had many contemporary High Street stores such as the Army & Navy store, and the largest Woolworths of its day and some of these remained after the 1964 rebuild.
The latest redevelopment of the 40-acre Bullring site has been carried out by The Birmingham Alliance, a partnership between the commercial sector and the local authority. The scheme has been cited as “the catalyst for Birmingham’s transformation into a world class retail capital - bringing modern, retail space into the city with department stores for Debenhams and Selfridges, over 140 shops, cafes and restaurants, 3,000 new car parking spaces, new open spaces, walkways and performance areas, and iconic new architecture”.
As part of the Bullring development existing landmarks such as the Rotunda, the old Moor Street Station and St Martins Church have been cleaned and restored, and long lost historic Birmingham street names, going back as far as the 18th century, have been reintroduced. A new pedestrian walkway next to St Martin’s Queensway has been called ‘Swan Passage’ after the nearby ancient route of ‘Swan Alley’, which appears on the 1731 plan of the city. Other names to reappear include Jamaica Row and Spiceal Street which first appeared in 1795.
Down the old market by Woolies (1970s)
Photo by Pete's dad Geoff Millington
Archaeological digs, carried out as part of the Bullring redevelopment, uncovered evidence of Birmingham’s medieval origins around 2 metres below the present-day ground level. A whole cooking pot, an oven and a domestic kiln dating back to medieval times were found close to the present day Edgbaston Street car park, whilst a dig on the site of the Indoor Market has shown that livestock were watered and rested on the land extending from Edgbaston Street to the watercourse which joined the moated manor house with Parsonage Moat, before being sold at the market. There is also evidence of a 13th century tannery, one of the earliest tanneries in the West Midlands.
Other archaeological digs at Moor Street, underneath Selfridges, and Park Street, on the site of Moor Street multi-storey car park, unearthed a boundary ditch which was part of the Lord of the Manor’s deer park in the 12th century. Elsewhere, the part remains of the Lord of the Manor’s moat were revealed and an excavation of St Martin’s churchyard recorded 857 human burials, mainly dating to the late 18th and throughout the 19th century.
From medieval cattle market to multi-million pound ‘new Millennium’ retail experience, the Bull Ring, or Bullring, remains at the centre of Brummie life. As Carl Chinn puts it with customary eloquence, “It is still the emotional heart of Birmingham. Markets drew people to the city and it is the people who have made Birmingham. We recognise that vital connection. More than anywhere else in our city, the Bull Ring symbolises Birmingham’s past, its present and its future. The Bull Ring is Birmingham”.
New Bullring under construction
photo by Dave Fletcher
Other interesting facts about the Bullring:
A lot of steel … a lot of concrete …
There are over 140 shops and kiosks within the new Bullring and 3,100 new car parking spaces were created. Over 8,000 jobs were created within Bullring and over half a million pounds a day was spent building Bullring. 15,500 tonnes of steel are in Bullring – that’s a ¼ of the steel in the Empire State Building and there is approximately 90,000 metres³ of concrete within the new Bullring. This is enough concrete to stretch between Birmingham and Oban, Scotland ten times. Demolition of the old Bullring started the 30 June 2000, with completion in March 2001.
A lot of Bull
The bronze sculpture Bull situated in the square at the base of the Rotunda is a two and a half life sized model of a Hereford bull, a regional breed which has historical links with the Bull Ring market. The sculpture weighs 5T and was designed by Laurence Broderick, a Bristol born sculptor who has studios in Cambridgeshire and on the Isle of Skye. Bull was modelled in plaster and sandcast in bronze at the Pangolin Editions Art Foundry in Gloucestershire.
And a touch of PR for good measure
Bullring or The Bull Ring? At some point during the £500 million pound redesign of Birmingham’s Bull Ring shopping centre, it has also had a name change from The Bull Ring to, simple and snappy, Bullring. As far as we can tell most Brummies have not yet noticed the absence of our much-loved “the” and the additional loss of the gap between the words Bull and Ring, so maybe it’s best if we just keep it to ourselves …. for now.
Corn Cheaping
According to William Westley’s map of Birmingham of 1731, the area defined as the Bull Ring was also known as Corn Cheaping. The street skirted the right hand side of St Martin’s to rise up the hill towards High Street, New Street and Dale End.
Find out more at the website links below:
http://www.bullring.co.uk/Reference material used to research this page:
Birmingham The Great Working City by Carl Chinn / Published 1994 by Birmingham City Council and The University of Birmingham
Portrait of Birmingham by Vivian Bird / Published by Robert Hale & Company, 1974
Carl Chinn – One Street Brum (article in Sunday Mercury special publication ‘The Old Lady is Back’) May 17, 1998
Positively Birmingham by Jonathan Berg – Birmingham Picture Library, 2003 edition
A History of Birmingham by Chris Upton / Phillimore & Co / 1993
A Viking ship in the Bull Ring (1970s)
Photo by Pete's dad Geoff Millington
John Lennon and Yoko Ono visited Coventry Cathedral in 1968 to plant acorns as part of their Acorns For Peace tour (as mentioned in The Ballad of John and Yoko). The acorns were, sadly, stolen.
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