During the Industrial Revolution, BirminghamEngland was known as the "city of a thousand trades", or "Workshop of the World", manufacturing everything from pins to motorcars. Sometimes it would be altered to "city of a thousand and one trades".
Canals played a vital role in Birmingham's development, bringing iron and coal into the city and transporting finished goods out.
In reality this term could be applied to many large British cities during the Industrial Revolution, however, Birmingham's importance in the Industrial Revolution and the vast number of exports and recognized brand names that came from the city's wealth of factories probably makes it an excellent example of a "city of a thousand trades".
Click here to see a selection of 19th century Birmingham Trades (http://www.search.revolutionaryplayers.org.uk/engine/theme/default.asp?theme=348&text=0)
The city's workmen designed and constructed railway carriages, steam engines, bicycles, automobiles and even – unusually for somewhere so far from the sea – ships, which were made as pre-fabricated sections, then assembled at the coast.
City of Birmingham Council House, with Dhruva Mistry's 'The River' in the foreground (commonly known as 'the floozie in the jacuzzi')
Across the wider city, the need to house the industrial workers who flocked here gave rise to miles of redbrick streets and terraces, many of back-to-back houses, some of which were later to become inner-city slums.
Feeds |
Contact