Birmingham: Bank of England branch, Union Street: survey plans, elevations and sections with proposed alterations, and related documents, 1826-1829 (18)

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Birmingham: Bank of England branch, Union Street: survey plans, elevations and sections with proposed alterations, and related documents, 1826-1829 (18)

Notes

The bank on Union Street was first earmarked for purchase by the Bank of England in August 1826. However, owing to complications with the lease and the discovery that the proprietors of the neighbouring library had a right of way through the yard at the rear of the bank (noted on drawing 8), the purchase of the lease from the assignees of Gibbons, Smith & Goode was delayed until November 1826. Once acquired, the turnaround was quick, and the Birmingham branch opened for business on 1 January 1827. The first agent was George Nicholls, and the sub-agent John Amery. From the dates on drawings 13-18, it can be judged that subsequent alterations to the branch first came under consideration in February 1829, and again throughout that year. In 1838 business was transferred to the former Bank of Birmingham property on Bennett's Hill, to both accommodate an increase in business, and to relocate from a building that was considered 'dark and confined'.

Literature:
W. Marston Acres, The Bank of England from Within, 1694-1900, Vol. II, 1931, pp. 432-33 & 571.

Tom Drysdale, February 2013

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Sir John Soane's collection includes some 30,000 architectural, design and topographical drawings which is a very important resource for scholars worldwide. His was the first architect’s collection to attempt to preserve the best in design for the architectural profession in the future, and it did so by assembling as exemplars surviving drawings by great Renaissance masters and by the leading architects in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries and his near contemporaries such as Sir William Chambers, Robert Adam and George Dance the Younger. These drawings sit side by side with 9,000 drawings in Soane’s own hand or those of the pupils in his office, covering his early work as a student, his time in Italy and the drawings produced in the course of his architectural practice from 1780 until the 1830s.

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Contents of Birmingham: Bank of England branch, Union Street: survey plans, elevations and sections with proposed alterations, and related documents, 1826-1829 (18)