Time Travel: Bristol Street

The spirit of place and how the witch interacts with it is an ongoing theme of witchcraft and of this blog. Given that another theme of the modern witchcraft movement is that of being open to many different sources of knowledge, it is also no surprise that the witch may consider herself able to journey in more than one dimension, and time is a frequently travelled dimension for the witch. I think this frequently takes the form of picking up something of the spirit of a place: for example we all know of places where every undertaking is doomed to failure. My workplace is one of these. If they'd bothered to ask me I could have told them that a former Roman fort where nothing will grow because of subsequent industrial use, was not a very sensible site to choose, but of course they didn’t. 

Anyway when it comes to being open to different sources of knowledge in time travel there is a very useful one. I have just bought a 1967/8 edition of the Kelly's Directory for Birmingham. I have deliberately chosen that year since it is near enough to the present for the life of the city not to be completely alien, yet is almost exactly fifty years old so the city has changed, while avoiding the problems of recognition caused by the comprehensive post-war reconstruction of the city centre. I have been flicking through it and found several surprises, in amongst many things I expected, such as the heavily industrial use of St Paul's Square. The place I have chosen for my first walk into the 1960s is a relatively short stretch of Bristol Street,  on the east side and starting with a local landmark :

My passage into the past was aided here by the fact that the numbers of the buildings have remained unchanged in the past fifty years and some buildings recognisably show their origins: for example this one has got 'bank' written all over it. Yet it also speaks of a time when the customer was not limited to a very few big-name banks, and there were multiple small regional banks. Ironically, the voracious Lloyds Bank started in Birmingham as one of those.

One of the things already present in the city fifty years ago was 'foreign' eateries and next we come to (on the left)  what was an opticians shop in 1967 and on the right, what has obviously been a licensed eatery since then and in fact in 1967 was the Oriental Curry Castle. Judging by the advanced state of dereliction of the buildings and the uniformity of their last makeover, my INFJ mind fits these facts together to make the conclusion that these buildings have the same owner, who was more interested in them in past years (around the seventies I'm guessing by the softwood windows)  but for whatever reason has since lost interest. Is anyone else picturing deep red flock wallpaper? 

Next we come to numbers 10 -12,  and we will find that in 1967 the building was occupied by Alfred Allen furnishings (presumably downstairs)  and Miss M Lewis MIDMA, MMATD, (both with commendation),  a dancing teacher, presumably upstairs. Unfortunately I have been unable to discover what Miss Lewis's qualifications or decorations actually are.

Number 34 provides us with apparently the only business left from that time,  Ladbrooke Pianos. It seems to have been an artistic building in 1967 since the wonderful Ian Campbell Folk Group were giving it as their address as well (incidentally their album recorded in The Crown, Ceilidh in The Crown is available on youtube and was the first folk music album ever) and also a firm of artists suppliers. I do love that the building is now an Ethiopian restaurant and love even more that for some bizarre reason it is named after the shamrock, not the plant with the most obvious Ethiopian connection. Unfortunately I have never eaten there - you see, I have read its food safety rating, and oddly nobody ever seems to be eating there. I wonder what it is a front for! 

Finally we return to the bank theme at number 36, the former premises of the Birmingham Municipal Bank. In fact it is extraordinary how banks have cropped up in my thoughts doing this post. Even the directory itself has an advertisement for the Birmingham Incorporated Building Society on the front. My only regret on my first public time travel is that the building at number 22 is plainly not the same as it was in the sixties: I was looking forward to commenting that it was a greeting card company called Gay Greetings Ltd!