St Paul's Church, Balsall Heath

St Paul’s Church stands in Balsall Heath, a Birmingham suburb of red-brick terraces and tree-lined streets. The first building was raised in the 1850s to designs by James Lyndon Pedley and opened in 1853 after a single year of construction. Mrs Taylor laid the foundation stone, and the Bishop of Worcester consecrated the church when it was barely finished. The original cost was £5,500, a large sum for the time, and the parish was carved from the older St Nicolas’ Church in Kings Norton. By the 1860s Edward Holmes enlarged the nave twice, giving the building its final footprint before the 20th century. The church played a part in the growth of Birmingham’s suburbs. From its parish land came four new churches: St Thomas in the Moors in 1884, St Patrick’s Bordesley in 1900, St Agatha’s Sparkbrook in 1902 and St Barnabas’ Balsall Heath in 1905. In the 1970s the congregation could no longer pay for repairs, so they joined with the United Reform Church to build a modern replacement. The new church, designed by Hinton Brown Langstone, was ready by 1980 when Bishop Hugh Montefiore consecrated it on the same site. Inside the present church the space is plain and light, with clear glass windows and a wide central aisle. The old Henry Willis organ, installed in 1880, was removed when the building closed in 1979 and now plays in St George’s Church, Hobart. The organ’s case and pipes are gone, but the walls still carry the names of former organists such as John Heywood, who served from 1866 to 1915. Outside, the graveyard holds weathered headstones from the 19th century, and the tower casts long shadows over the surrounding streets.