About Brum

Now, before we get started, I’m by no means a Microsoft shill (the Ubuntu sticker on my laptop should indicate that, that’s another discussion entirely however so let’s not go there). But, one thing I do like though are the pockets of resistance within Microsoft’s ranks; one such division is the development team who work on stuff like the Live project – Live Maps being one of the jewels in the crown. Obviously tons of money was poured into the project to make it a competitor for Google Maps, but it’s actually got some pretty standout features.

Someone told me that they’d revamped the interface, and he has – it’s now got far more “bird’s eye” views for the UK than it did previously. More interestingly, it’s got quite comprehensive bird’s eye views for all over the centre of Brum – but they’re at least two years’ old Still, if you’ve never been to Birmingham, it’s an easy way to get a much better idea of what the city looks like. I even did my route from my house to the Bullring in a spare five minutes

To get you started, here’s a link which’ll zoom you right in to the former Birmingham Eye (in front of the ICC, on Broad Street) – if you move left, you get to a large roundabout, also the location of UCE’s Birmingham Conservatoire (well, now BCU’s Conservatoire, but I still don’t acknowledge last year’s namechange) and, to the left of that, Victoria Square – but the beauty is you can always switch to overhead mode and get the street names! Top tip with Live Maps: you can change your orientation too, so you get a completely different perspective which can also help you look round tall buildings – click the N, S, E or W letters to rotate your view.

I’ve also collected together some of the city centre landmarks into a collection on Live Maps called Christopher’s Brum Landmarks, so you can spend a while browsing round and seeing what’s what and what’s where, as such – there are far more comprehensive listings and I encourage you to search around the subject (the ‘Explore Collections’ feature in Live Maps is your friend here!) but these landmarks should get you started. There’s a really comprehensive compilation of landmarks which someone has uploaded onto the Keyhole forums (and Live Maps has spidered, and can display) – to view it, click through to Birmingham Folder.kmz on Live Maps, or click here to load it directly.

I put loads of landmarks into my own Google Earth collection, but as I couldn’t get them to save in a single .kmz file I just kept them in Google Earth’s temporary files – but then lost them all when I upgraded Google Earth. I’ve not gotten round (as yet) to fully recreating this list, so apologies for the awful gaps in the Live Maps collection (I’ve not even put a pushpin into my own University faculty building! (it’s the TIC inside Millennium Point on Curzon Street)). However, I’ll add more landmarks to my own collection as I get time to do so, but as I’m avoiding doing work right now you’re all quite lucky – that’s an hour of quality time I just put into aggregating that list of landmarks!

Well, you’re in luck.

In a somewhat meta presentation at Town Hall, due to take place on Sunday the 20th of January at 2pm, a chap called Anthony Peers is going to deliver “an account of the architectural history of Town Hall from its construction through to it recent renaissance.” Apparently, “Anthony has been researching the history of the building for close to a decade and was involved in the planning of the recently completed scheme of repairs and improvements.”

Unfortunately I’m not in Birmingham that weekend – drat! However, it sounds really quite interesting, and it’s only £6 (£5 if you’re over 60, although I bet they have student concessions going if you ask nicely)… So, there’s no real excuse for you to avoid this talk if you’re truly interested in the redevelopment and reopening of one of Birmingham’s largest and best-known landmarks.

And, as a bonus, click the image above to get a full-sized version, taken (and stitched together) by yours truly. Enjoy

Only in Birmingham… Just in case you weren’t sure of the location of the last public hanging in Brum (apparently it was mistakenly thought to have taken place somewhere else for all these years), it’s now been comemorated with a plaque:

The site of the last public hanging in Birmingham is being marked with a plaque, after the spot was wrongly identified for a number of years.

Philip Matsell was hanged for shooting and wounding, in front of a crowd of 40,000 in August 1806 on the corner of Great Charles Street and Snow Hill.  An historian’s research proved it was not in Ludgate Hill as earlier thought. Public executions in London took place in Ludgate Hill which may account for the mix-up.

The new plaque, known as a History Plate, is being unveiled by Birmingham’s Civic Society. Conceding it was a “gruesome” act to commemorate, a spokesman said Birmingham stopped its public hangings many years before other cities. Mr Matsell was executed for the murder of a “peace officer” – an early form of police officer.

The unveiling will be at the West Midlands Police Museum in Sparkhill, Birmingham, with the plaque being put up under the Great Charles Street railway bridge later.

Erm… Well, I’m sure that’ll be hotly attended – still, might as well go take a look at it. You can’t deny that it’s certainly an evocative thing to comemorate, if nothing else! I’ll always look at Snow Hill in a slightly different light now…