Oh Birmingham....

    

  ....what has become of you? Have you really so sunk so low?

     I am talking here about the planning application by Marrons (for HJB Investments) for 80 Broad St, in the city.  I first came across this application in the current edition of 'Private Eye' last week.  It has also been reported on by the BBC and GBNews.  In addition to the 'Eye' it has also featured in other traditional print media such as 'Building Design' and 'Construction Enquirer' - most of these articles are essentially a re-write of a post on the Marrons' website.

 

     To the scheme and it really is a shocker, entailing the proposed construction of a 438ft high tower over the top of a late, rather attractive, Grade II listed, Georgian mansion called, in a couple of on-line articles, 'Islington Villa'.¹  (This end of Broad St was in the beginning of the 19th century known as Islington and Broad St as Islington Rd.)  As far as I can make it both the architect of the villa and the date of construction are unknown; Pevsner says c1830s, while flickr 1814.² It was the home of Owen Johnson, one of the founders of the Islington Glassworks, but most of its life has not been domestic but institutional i.e. a series of hospitals.  In recent years it has been a restaurant and a bar and has since Lockdown been empty.  For all its vicissitudes it is one of the last remaining pieces of the old Broad St. and, with the extraordinary former Broad St Presbyterian Church (1848-9 by J R Botham), perhaps the best bit of architecture going on the street.  And, let's face it, Broad St needs all the help it can get. It abounds in ugliness, but then the whole of the City Centre is slowly sinking into vulgarity. 

     Let's hope this really doesn't get planning permission. Marrons' design will not only set a dangerous precedent should it get permission, but it will do nothing to enhance Broad St while actually demeaning the current structure. 

Great news! As of today (25.04.24) the scheme has failed to get planning permission.  Islington Villa is safe.  For now.

1  The tower, I believe, will be mainly, as the headline on 'Business-Live.co.uk' so elegantly puts it, 'resi'.  That's residential to you and me.

2 The architect of the sympathetically designed wings is however known.  It was John Jones Bateman (never heard of him).  They date from 1863, when 'Islington Villa' was already a hospital.  The railings are also listed.