Concluding the Digbeth/Eastside Update

 With the pubs being back open again (well, for outdoor table service only) I realise that I've left a few of the Digbeth stragglers without an up date. So, here we go: -

 

#064 White Swan, Bradford Street, Digbeth

 

Last year I reported the depressing news that this magnificent boozer had closed with little prospect of reopening in the near future. This is the scene that I discovered a few weeks ago.

White Swan, Digbeth 2021

On the face of it, there would appear to be few prospects of it reopening any time soon with extra layers of grafitti having been added. However, appearances can be deceptive. That whole plot of land behind the White Swan is owned by Seven Capital who are also now the owners of the pub. They have pledged to reopen the pub and, as they own the land, they plan to have an extensive 'garden' area at the back of the property - details here.

#048 Adam & Eve, Bradford Street, Deritend (RIP)

 

When I last reported on the Adam & Eve in 2018 it had closed as a pub and resurrected itself as Evolve - a café and event space designed to provide young people with training. Now into 2021...there's been no change!

Adam & Eve, Deritend 2021

#018 Subside (aka The Dubliner), Digbeth

 

For many years this was The Barrel Organ, which then morphed into The Dubliner and, when I last reported in 2018, it had changed name, again, to Subside which is more of a nightclub than a pub. Here in 2021, nothing much has changed.

Subside, Digbeth 2021

 

 

 

#068 The Ruin, Floodgate Street, Digbeth

 

Another pub that I last reported on in 2018 and another Digbeth survivor that has had many names over the past few years...and another that has changed very little over the past few years.

The Ruin, Digbeth 2021

 

#012 The Forge Tavern, Digbeth (RIP)

 

When I last reported in 2018 The Forge Tavern had been closed down following a fatal stabbing in 2017. Unfortunately, in the intervening years it would appear that only decay and dereliction have followed.

The Forge Tavern, Digbeth 2021

 

#056 The Woodman, Digbeth

 

Surprisingly, I haven't reported on the Woodman since the original blog post in 2011, although it has appeared in several posts in the meantime. Although it is a few yards away from the site of the much missed Eagle & Tun, The Woodman is guaranteed to survive the building of the new HS2 terminus.

The Woodman, Digbeth 2021

So, depite the tremendous upheavals in the vicinity, The Woodman has been back as strong as ever since the pubs were allowed to reopen!

#040 Eagle & Ball, Gopsal Street, Birmingham City University 

 

The Eagle & Ball has been one of the success stories of this area with the old Moby Dick's being resurrected as the Eagle & Ball. I last reported in 2018 when it had reopened, and now...no real change!

Eagle & Ball, Gopsal Street, BCU

And finally....

#013 Mist Shisha Lounge, Adelaide Street, Deritend

When I first pictured this establishment it was the Carpenters Arms, but by 2011 it had become the Moon Shisha Lounge. I last reported in 2018 when it had changed to Mist Shisha Lounge. This is the scene in 2021.

Mist Shisha Lounge, Adelaide Street, Deritend

It has been redecorated in the ensuing years and still appears to be a going concern.

 

So, there you have it, a whistlestop tour through the last few pubs in Digbeth and Eastside. Not many more have gone for good, but the next few months will be critical for the survival propsects of many. Let's hope for a warm summer with good football to swell pub attendances!

#032 Eagle & Tun, Digbeth, Birmingham : 1998 to 2021 (RIP)

 This will be my third and final report on the fate of the Eagle & Tun pub. This is from my 2016 write up: -

"When I first took a picture of this pub back in 1998 it was called the Cauliflower Ear and I'd never seen nor heard of it before.

Then we stopped in Birmingham on the penultimate night of our trip that was to have taken us to Chester, but ended up with us visiting Leek. In my quest to venture into pubs that we'd not previously visited on our canal trips, we took a stroll into Digbeth and the Eagle & Tun was one of our stops. It was the evening of Thursday 19th September 2002 and as I recall, we had a great time in there and the place was packed. Notice how it has changed from being an Ansell's pub to a Free House, but inside it was beautifully tiled.

Next time I visited was a few years later, but it was very quiet even though it was a Saturday night. So now we move on to Monday 15th August 2011 and it is closed. Apparently it shut its doors in 2008 and there's no real sign of it reopening.

If you panned back from this picture you'd see that there is very little left standing around here. About 100 yards behind me is the Woodman pub which is still open. I think the best bet for the Eagle & Tun is the new High Speed (HS2) Rail project which is planned to terminate at Curzon Street Station which is to the right of where I'm standing in this shot.

You can get a flavour for the interior of the Eagle & Tun here in the video for UB40's "Red Red Wine" which was shot in the pub in the early 1980's. Hopefully it won't be demolished, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

That's what I wrote back in 2011, but late last year I got a comment on the blog that the Eagle & Tun was back in business. Well, it's taken me a few weeks to get around to it, but here's the picture from Friday 5th February 2016!

I didn't go inside, but with smokers outside the door, it seemed to be doing OK. Hopefully this will be a long term going concern and survive into the 'brave new' era of HS2."

 

Since then I made one more visit to the Eagle & Tun, on the afternoon of Wednesday 11th July 2018, as part of one of the Proper Pubs Days Out - report here 

In the original plans for HS2, this pub was going to be preserved and become part of the new entranceway to the station. Unfortunately, as often seems to happen with modern developments, the preservation of old older architecture seems to fall by the wayside as plans get revised.

 

So, now we're in 2021, this is the scene that I found on the afternoon of Saturday 16th January 2021.

The Eagle & Tun was finally demolished in October 2020...another sad loss amongst so many others!

#023 O'Neills, Curzon Street, Birmingham : 1998 to 2021 (RIP)

 This is another pub that was demolished long before my 2011 revisit, but this shows the final resting place of O'Neills (previously the Old Railway). But first, this is what I wrote back in 2011: -
 

"When I toured around the Digbeth area of Birmingham, O'Neills was a completely new place to me and, to be honest didn't look too appealing. This is the tenth in my 'Birmingham Eastside' series.

 However, as I've been doing some background research I've discovered that, in a previous life, this was the Old Railway, a popular music venue. More information is to be found here.

Moving on to 2011, and the title gives it away somewhat, this was the scene that presented itself to me

Gone completely, yet the Give Way and street signs remain in exactly the same places! This was the sort of scene I expected to find when I set out on this project, but it is still quite a shock to find no trace of the pub. The building on the left, in the distance, is Moby Dick's which will feature later on in this series.

What the future holds for this area is still unsure. To the right of where the picture was taken is the Thinktank and behind me is the now defunct Curzon Street Station. If the HS2 High Speed Rail ever gets built, the Birmingham branch will terminate at Curzon Street, so maybe there will be more pubs opened/reopened in the environs. Well, we can hope!"

Before I move on to 2021; Moby Dick's is still there, resurrected as the Eagle & Ball (see my write up - here); HS2 has got the go-ahead and work is ongoing on that project; my optimism that more pubs might reopen in the future seems sadly misplaced!

Back in 2011, I was unaware as to what was going to fill this large empty space, but I can now reveal the vista that now presents itself.

This is the quite spectacular Curzon Building of Birmingham City University which also included the refurbishment of the Eagle & Ball pub - details here.

So, 23 years on and everything has changed, the pub has gone forever, the road signs replaced and even the road junction has been remodelled for the modern era.

#040 Eagle & Ball, Eastside, Birmingham : 1998 to 2018 (Revisited)

Back in 2011 when I started this blog I had two sets of pictures that I wanted to show to a wider world. Firstly was my collection of canal-related pubs that we'd visited on our various waterways holidays throughout the years from 1986 onwards.

Secondly, in 1998, I'd gone around Digbeth/Deritend/Highgate taking pictures of as many pubs as I could find with a view to going back in five years to see how things had changed with the forthcoming 'Eastside' developments proposed at that time.

Well, five years stretched into thirteen and I finally revisited them all in 2011 and recorded the changes here on this blog. Now we've moved another 6/7 years into the future to find that some developments are almost complete and others are in the pipeline, so now seemed an appropriate time to revisit this part of Birmingham.

But, where to start.....?

I decided to begin with a pub that I didn't know existed until I took the picture in 1998 and one of Retired Martin's favourite Birmingham boozers! Although, back then, it was called Moby Dick's and these were my observations back in 2011.

Back in 1998 Moby Dick's was a completely new discovery for me down a side street I'd never been on before.

A typical street corner pub, similar to several others in the area. Needless to say, I never made it back there for a drink.

Onwards to 2011 and it is closed, boarded up and, by all accounts, ready for demolition to make way for the Eastside Locks Development. This is a new concept to me, it looks very good on paper, but whether there will ever be the money to complete the project is doubtful in this economic climate.

Oh well, what do I know about the 'economic climate'? Very little as it turns out! What I'd failed to realise was that a major part of this redevelopment was to build a brand new campus for Birmingham City University and that Moby Dick's would become the Eagle & Ball which is, essentially, the student union bar, although it is still a pub open to all (when it is actually open!)

So, now it nestles amongst the ultra modern buildings of BCU and it has reverted back to its original name.

 

(...and I've still not been inside!)  

UPDATE: #023 O'Neills, Curzon Street, Birmingham : 1998 to 2017 (RIP)

Back in 2011 when I first wrote this entry, I didn't know what was going to happen with this site. Below, you can see the final fate of this junction.

 

When I toured around the Digbeth area of Birmingham, O'Neills was a completely new place to me and, to be honest didn't look too appealing. This is the tenth in my 'Birmingham Eastside' series.

 However, as I've been doing some background research I've discovered that, in a previous life, this was the Old Railway, a popular music venue. More information is to be found here.


Moving on to 2011, and the title gives it away somewhat, this was the scene that presented itself to me.

Gone completely, yet the Give Way and street signs remain in exactly the same places! This was the sort of scene I expected to find when I set out on this project, but it is still quite a shock to find no trace of the pub. The building on the left, in the distance, is Moby Dick's which will feature later on in this series.


What the future holds for this area is still unsure. To the left of where the picture was taken is the Thinktank and behind me is the now defunct Curzon Street Station. If the HS2 High Speed Rail ever gets built, the Birmingham branch will terminate at Curzon Street, so maybe there will be more pubs opened/reopened in the environs. Well, we can hope!

 

So, here we are in 2017 and this is the current view of the corner of Curzon Street and Cardigan Street.

Now the Curzon Building of Birmingham City University stands proudly where once stood The Old Railway pub/O'Neills - I suppose that's progress!

 

Much work is still ongoing and I can report good news regarding Moby Dick's that was visible in 2011 from this position. It has survived and is now the student union bar. I couldn't get a photo as there is still a lot of construction work going on around it.

 

Progress has also been made on the HS2 Project and the new station will be directly behind where I was standing for this photo

#032 UPDATE Eagle & Tun, Digbeth : 1998 to 2016 (Back from the Grave!)

When I first took a picture of this pub back in 1998 it was called the Cauliflower Ear and I'd never seen nor heard of it before.

Then we stopped in Birmingham on the penultimate night of our trip that was to have taken us to Chester, but ended up with us visiting Leek. In my quest to venture into pubs that we'd not previously visited on our canal trips, we took a stroll into Digbeth and the Eagle & Tun was one of our stops. It was the evening of Thursday 19th September 2002 and as I recall, we had a great time in there and the place was packed. Notice how it has changed from being an Ansell's pub to a Free House, but inside it was beautifully tiled.

Next time I visited was a few years later, but it was very quiet even though it was a Saturday night. So now we move on to Monday 15th August 2011 and it is closed. Apparently it shut its doors in 2008 and there's no real sign of it reopening.

If you panned back from this picture you'd see that there is very little left standing around here. About 100 yards behind me is the Woodman pub which is still open. I think the best bet for the Eagle & Tun is the new High Speed (HS2) Rail project which is planned to terminate at Curzon Street Station which is to the right of where I'm standing in this shot.

You can get a flavour for the interior of the Eagle & Tun here in the video for UB40's "Red Red Wine" which was shot in the pub in the early 1980's. Hopefully it won't be demolished, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

That's what I wrote back in 2011, but late last year I got a comment on the blog that the Eagle & Tun was back in business. Well, it's taken me a few weeks to get around to it, but here's the picture from Friday 5th February 2016!

I didn't go inside, but with smokers outside the door, it seemed to be doing OK. Hopefully this will be a long term going concern and survive into the 'brave new' era of HS2.

 

I also took the liberty of giving it the Photo Digital Art treatment!

 It is now five years since I started this blog and over the coming months I'll be updating all of the Digbeth entries to see what has changed, what has remained the same and what has gone forever!

Digbeth Update

It is almost three years since I went around the Digbeth area taking pictures of the surviving pubs. I was in the area this week taking pictures, mostly non-pub related and I noticed that in the passing three years very little has changed, at least as far as the pubs go (Lots of other things have changed, but the pubs seem to be quite stable for the time being). However there are a couple of examples that are worth reporting.

Back in 2011, the pub that was formerly The Carpenters Arms had been turned into the Moon Shisha Lounge (see #013 on this blog). Unfortunately that has now also closed. I'm not sure when it happened, but I don't think there is much chance of anything pub related returning to this site.

The other story is much more upbeat. In 2011 I wasn't sure whether The Woodman was still open nor what the future held for it (see #056 on this blog).

After I wrote that blog it was closed for some time, but since September 2013 it has been restored to its former glory and open for business again. I haven't been back in, yet, but the details can be seen here on their website.

Although it currently stands a bit on its own, hopefully, the development of the surrounding area and the building of HS2 will lead to a secure future for this magnificent building.

For any other Digbeth related information, I always refer to the excellent blog Digbeth is Good.

#056 The Woodman, Digbeth : 1998 to 2011 (RIP??)

The Woodman is one of the finest examples of what proper city pubs can be. It is one of the earliest of the pubs designed by James & Lister Lea. It is one of the pubs that I had occasionally visited before I took this photo in 1998.

As I remember, it has a compact front bar and a lovely, quiet back room that still had gas lights on the tiled wall. In 1998 this was still a busy and popular pub, but how times have changed.

In the intervening 13 years there have been massive developments in this part of Digbeth. The whole area behind The Woodman has been flattened and is now (or it was the last time I looked) somewhat neglected grassy area.

To give some geographical perspective, the city centre is off to the right. Behind me is the Thinktank which opened in 2001 and houses the Birmingham Science Museum and is part of the Millennium Point development. To the left of The Woodman is New Canal Street which leads to the old Curzon Street Station and the (closed) Eagle & Tun which was #032 in this series.

Curzon Street was the site of Birmingham's first raiway terminus and is a listed building. This will be the future Birmingham terminus of the HS2 High Speed Rail Line.

Here is the view from the back of The Woodman and the Eagle & Tun is to my right. These pubs are both under threat from the developers who have previous for demolishing old buildings that are in their way. Personally, I'd have thought that incorporating such lovely old buildings into a new development would make the final experience so much better. What could be better than to step off a high-tech, hi-speed train, that has whisked you to Birmingham from London in less than hour, into a lovely old pub for a pint? Obviously I'm biased, but surely even the developers can see the attractions of mixing the new with a bit of the old.

More about this can be found on the Digbeth is Good website which is better informed about these matters that I am!

This is the twenty-sixth in my 'Birmingham Eastside' series.

#032 Eagle & Tun, Digbeth : 1998 to 2011 (RIP??)

When I first took a picture of this pub in 1998 it was called the Cauliflower Ear and I'd never seen nor heard of it before.

Then, in 2002, we stopped in Birmingham on the penultimate night of our trip that was to have taken us to Chester, but ended up with us visiting Leek. In my quest to venture into pubs that we'd not previously visited on our canal trips, we took a stroll into Digbeth and the Eagle & Tun was one of our stops. It was Thursday 19th September and as I recall, we had a great time in there and the place was packed. Notice how it has changed from being an Ansell's pub to a Free House, but inside it was beautifully tiled.

Next time I visited was a few years later, but it was very quiet even though it was a Saturday night. So now we move on to 2011 and it is closed. Apparently it shut its doors in 2008 and there's no real sign of it reopening.

If you panned back from this picture you'd see that there is very little left standing around here. About 100 yards behind me is the Woodman pub which is still open. I think the best bet for the Eagle & Tun is the new High Speed (HS2) Rail project which is planned to terminate at Curzon Street Station which is to the right of where I'm standing in this shot.

You can get a flavour for the interior of the Eagle & Tun here in the video for UB40's "Red Red Wine" which was shot in the pub in the early 1980's. Hopefully it won't be demolished, but I'm not holding my breath.

#023 O'Neills, Curzon Street : 1998 to 2011 (RIP)

When I toured around the Digbeth area of Birmingham, O'Neills was a completely new place to me and, to be honest didn't look too appealing. This is the tenth in my 'Birmingham Eastside' series.

 However, as I've been doing some background research I've discovered that, in a previous life, this was the Old Railway, a popular music venue. More information is to be found here.


Moving on to 2011, and the title gives it away somewhat, this was the scene that presented itself to me.

Gone completely, yet the Give Way and street signs remain in exactly the same places! This was the sort of scene I expected to find when I set out on this project, but it is still quite a shock to find no trace of the pub. The building on the left, in the distance, is Moby Dick's which will feature later on in this series.


What the future holds for this area is still unsure. To the right of where the picture was taken is the Thinktank and behind me is the now defunct Curzon Street Station. If the HS2 High Speed Rail ever gets built, the Birmingham branch will terminate at Curzon Street, so maybe there will be more pubs opened/reopened in the environs. Well, we can hope!