History:
The Birmingham area was occupied in Roman times, with
several military roads and a large fort. Birmingham started life as a small
Saxon hamlet in the dark ages. And was first recorded in written documents
by the Domesday Book of 1086 as a small village.
From the 12th century onwards Birmingham
developed into a market centre. And by the 17th century had become an
important manufacturing town with a reputation for producing small arms.
Birmingham manufacturers supplied Oliver Cromwell's forces with much of
their weaponry during the English Civil War.
During the Industrial Revolution from the mid 18th
century onwards, because of abundant nearby sources of coal and iron ore and
a skilled workforce, Birmingham grew into a major industrial centre.
Birmingham became a centre of the British canal and later railway networks
in the early 19th century.
In Victorian times,
the population of the city grew rapidly to well over half a million and
Birmingham became the second largest population centre in Britain, it became
known as the "City of a thousand trades" due to the wide variety of
manufacturing industries located there. Birmingham gained city status in
1889.(The Victorian Era of Britain is
considered the height of the industrial revolution in Britain and the apex
of the British Empire. It is often defined as the years from 1837 to 1901
when Queen Victoria reigned, though many historians consider the passage of
the reform bill of 1832 to mark the true inception of a new cultural era.
The period before the Victorian era is known as the Georgian era and it is
followed by the Edwardian period.)
Birmingham
suffered heavy bomb damage during World War II, and partly as a result of
this the city was extensively re-developed during the 1950s and 1960s with
many concrete office buildings, ring roads, and now much-derided pedestrian
subways, as a result Birmingham gained a reputation for ugliness, frequently
being described as a "concrete jungle".
However, in recent years the city centre
has been extensively renovated and restored with the construction of new
squares, the restoration of old streets, buildings and canals, and the
removal of much-derided pedestrian subways.
