Some history on Adelaide Street at Highgate in Birmingham in the County of Warwickshire

Adelaide Street Pubs

This thoroughfare was probably named after Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, wife of King William IV and Queen consort of the United Kingdom and Hanover from 1830 to 1837.

Only the former Carpenters' Arms remains of old Adelaide Street - and even that was rebuilt during the inter-war years. The triangle formed by Adelaide Street, Darwin Street and Alcester Street was a right mess when I last looked in 2020. A car park occupied some of the space, the rest being taken up by a pile of rubbish skips. However, the area was once packed with terraced housing and courts. The council did away with them but gave nothing of aesthetic or intrinsic value in return.

This early Edwardian photograph of Court 9 is typical of the housing conditions in part of Adelaide Street. It was not all grim-looking courts as part of the street had some higher quality housing. The thoroughfare, like much of central Birmingham, was badly affected during the bombing of the Second World War. Many spaces were created by the Luftwaffe's bomber planes. Remember, however, Britain did the same to German cities. As Edwin Starr once sang: "War, what is it good for ... absolutely nothing."

1888 Trade Directory

North Side
1 Carpenters' Arms, George Rotton
2 William Hawthorn, Linen Draper
3 Mrs. Ruth Broadhurst, Corn Dealer
5 William Field, Spoon Maker
11 Arthur Haskins, Greengrocer
Here is Charles Henry Street
South Side 22 George Alfred Hastilow, Grocer
24 James Ford, Glass and China Dealer
33 Benjamin Palmer, Pawnbroker
34 George Field, Shopkeeper
42 Charles Holloway, Plumber