Panoramic view of Birmingham (1821)
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Images of Birmingham’s early 19th century landscape show how its increasingly urbanised inhabitants still clung on to the last remnants of open space that had been well known to the town’s 18th century citizens.
The ‘Panoramic View of Birmingham 1821’ by the important local artist, Samuel Lines, shows green space behind New Street, where a number of fields, gardens and growing allotments appear to exist. However, with the population rapidly increasing by the mid-nineteenth century, these threatened enclaves of land would soon be lost to a labyrinth of streets, houses, workshops and cut through passages.
The 19th century story of Birmingham is the story of the rapid and often difficult shift to an industrialised, densely populated environment. It would require a powerful campaign by social reformers to improve social condition for the many migrants who came from rural poverty to find work in the urban metropolis. This gallery offers some information about those campaigns, and, in particular, focuses on the nature of the nineteenth century ‘land debate’ raised by the politician and reformer Jesse Collings.
