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Sparkhill Library
Sparkhill Library, formerly Yardley Council House, is a municipal building in Stratford Road in Sparkhill, West Midlands, England. The building, which previously served as the offices of Yardley Rural District Council, now operates as a public library administered by Birmingham City Council. History In the 19th century, Yardley was administered by a parish council. However, following implementation of the Local Government Act 1894, Yardley Rural District Council was formed in 1895. The new council immediately decided to commission a council house (town hall) for the area. The site they selected was open land on the southwest side of Stratford Road. Construction of the new building started in 1900. It was designed by Arthur Harrison in the Renaissance Revival style, built in red brick with stone dressings at a cost of £16,000 () and was officially opened on Wednesday 15 January 1902. The design involved a symmetrical main block of seven bays facing onto Stratford Road, wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sparkhill
Sparkhill is an inner-city area of Birmingham, England, situated between Springfield, Birmingham, Springfield, Hall Green and Sparkbrook. Historic counties of England, Historically part of Worcestershire, Sparkhill once existed as a Yardley Rural District, rural area with its main industry being agriculture until the 1880s. History The Sparke family In the Middle Ages, the Sparke family farmed in the area, although it can be posited that Sparkhill takes its name from Spark Brook, a small stream that flows from Moseley to the River Cole, West Midlands, River Cole in Small Heath, Birmingham, Small Heath. It was, as the name suggests, a hill that was situated alongside the stream. The watercourse can be traced almost entirely along its length from source to where it joins the River Tame, West Midlands, River Tame, although most of its tributaries are now culverted, and is a popular route for leisure walkers and cyclists. The only part where it cannot easily be followed is a sho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transom (architecture)
In architecture, a transom is a transverse horizontal structural beam or bar, or a crosspiece separating a door from a window above it. This contrasts with a mullion, a vertical structural member. Transom or transom window is also the customary U.S. word used for a transom light, the window over this crosspiece. In Britain, the transom light is usually referred to as a fanlight, often with a semi-circular shape, especially when the window is segmented like the slats of a folding hand fan. A prominent example of this is at the main entrance of 10 Downing Street, the official residence of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. History In early Gothic ecclesiastical work, transoms are found only in belfry unglazed windows or spire lights, where they were deemed necessary to strengthen the mullions in the absence of the iron stay bars, which in glazed windows served a similar purpose. In the later Gothic, and more especially the Perpendicular Period, the introduction of tran ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Individual Clocks In England
An individual is one that exists as a distinct entity. Individuality (or self-hood) is the state or quality of living as an individual; particularly (in the case of humans) as a person unique from other people and possessing one's own needs or goals, rights and responsibilities. The concept of an individual features in many fields, including biology, law, and philosophy. Every individual contributes significantly to the growth of a civilization. Society is a multifaceted concept that is shaped and influenced by a wide range of different things, including human behaviors, attitudes, and ideas. The culture, morals, and beliefs of others as well as the general direction and trajectory of the society can all be influenced and shaped by an individual's activities. Etymology From the 15th century and earlier (and also today within the fields of statistics and metaphysics) ''individual'' meant " indivisible", typically describing any numerically singular thing, but sometimes meanin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clock Towers In The United Kingdom
A clock or chronometer is a device that measures and displays time. The clock is one of the oldest Invention, human inventions, meeting the need to measure intervals of time shorter than the natural units such as the day, the lunar month, and the year. Devices operating on several physical processes have been used over the Millennium, millennia. Some predecessors to the modern clock may be considered "clocks" that are based on movement in nature: A sundial shows the time by displaying the position of a shadow on a flat surface. There is a range of duration timers, a well-known example being the hourglass. Water clocks, along with sundials, are possibly the oldest time-measuring instruments. A major advance occurred with the invention of the verge escapement, which made possible the first mechanical clocks around 1300 in Europe, which kept time with oscillating timekeepers like balance wheels., pp. 103–104., p. 31. Traditionally, in horology (the study of timekeeping), the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Libraries In Birmingham, West Midlands
A library is a collection of books, and possibly other materials and media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or digital (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location, a virtual space, or both. A library's collection normally includes printed materials which may be borrowed, and usually also includes a reference section of publications which may only be utilized inside the premises. Resources such as commercial releases of films, television programmes, other video recordings, radio, music and audio recordings may be available in many formats. These include DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs, cassettes, or other applicable formats such as microform. They may also provide access to information, music or other content held on bibliographic databases. In addition, some libraries offer creation stations for makers which offer access to a 3D printing station with a 3D scanner. Libraries can vary widely ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir Henry Barber, 1st Baronet
Sir William Henry Barber, 1st Baronet (9 November 1860 – 2 July 1927), known as Henry Barber, was a wealthy solicitor and property developer who made his fortune expanding Birmingham's sprawling suburbs, building and renting out 5,000 properties in areas including Sparkbrook, Hay Mills, Acocks Green, Bordesley Green and Aston.Grimley, Terry. ''A fine art gift to the city'', Birmingham Post, 1 April 2006 He was born in Handsworth (then in Staffordshire, now Birmingham), the eldest son of a master jeweller, and grew up in the city's Jewellery Quarter before training as a solicitor. In 1893, he married Martha Constance Hattie Onions, who was an heiress, daughter of Simon Brookes Onions, of the Birmingham family of bellowsmakers, J. C. Onions (later, Alldays and Onions Engineering Company). The couple moved into the eighteenth-century Culham Court on the Thames near Henley in the same year, which they rented. By his mid-thirties the couple retired but their connections with t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Handsworth, West Midlands
Handsworth () is an inner-city area of Birmingham in the county of the West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England. Historically in Staffordshire, Handsworth lies just outside Birmingham City Centre and near the town of Smethwick. In 2021 the ward had a population of 11,820. History The name ''Handsworth'' originates from its Anglo-Saxons, Saxon owner Hondes and the Old English language, Old English word ''weorthing'', meaning farm or estate. It was recorded in the Domesday Book, Domesday Survey of 1086, as a holding of William Fitz-Ansculf, the Lord of Dudley, although at that time it would only have been a very small village surrounded by farmland and extensive woodland. One of the oldest buildings in Handsworth is the Old Town Hall, Handsworth, Old Town Hall which dates from 1460. Historically in the county of Staffordshire, it remained a small village from the 13th century to the 18th century. Accommodation was built for factory workers, the village quickly grew, and in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benjamin Creswick
Benjamin Creswick, RBSA (1853–1946) was an English sculptor. Life Benjamin Creswick was born in Sheffield, the son of a spectacle-maker. He started his working life as a knife-grinder, but took up sculpture with the encouragement of John Ruskin. In 1887 he modelled a terracotta frieze showing the processes of knife-grinding for the exterior of Cutlers' Hall, in Warwick Lane in the City of London. In the same year he made a frieze for Henry Heath's shop in Oxford Street, London, showing hat-makers at work. Creswick worked on various projects with A.H. Mackmurdo, such as the decoration of Pownall Hall in Cheshire, and contributed to the display by Mackmurdo's Century Guild at the Inventions Exhibition in 1885, though he did not join the guild until the following year. He spent some time in Liverpool and Manchester, before moving to Birmingham, where he was Master of Modelling and Modelled Design at the Birmingham School of Art from 1889 to 1918. He exhibited at the Royal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mullion
A mullion is a vertical element that forms a division between units of a window or screen, or is used decoratively. It is also often used as a division between double doors. When dividing adjacent window units its primary purpose is a rigid support to the glazing of the window. Its secondary purpose is to provide structural support to an arch or lintel above the window opening. Horizontal elements separating the head of a door from a window above are called transoms. History Stone mullions were used in Armenian, Saxon and Islamic architecture prior to the 10th century. They became a common and fashionable architectural feature across Europe in Romanesque architecture, with paired windows divided by a mullion, set beneath a single arch. The same structural form was used for open arcades as well as windows, and is found in galleries and cloisters. In Gothic architecture, windows became larger and arrangements of multiple mullions and openings were used, both for structure and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Harrison (architect)
Arthur Harrison (22 January 1862 – 22 August 1922) FRIBA was an architect based in Birmingham, England. Life Arthur Harrison was born in Nottingham on 22 January 1862. He trained with William Martin (architect), William Martin and John Henry Chamberlain in Birmingham before moving as assistant to George A Cox in 1885. He commenced independent practice in Birmingham in 1888 but later was trading as Harrison and Cox with George Bernard Cox. He was elected FRIBA in 1902 as a result of being President of the Birmingham Architectural Association. He was also President of the Rotary Club of Birmingham. He died on 22 August 1922 at his country cottage at Welford-on-Avon. Works *28-34 Albert Street, Birmingham. 1888 *Hall Green Junior School, Stratford Road, Hall Green, Birmingham 1892 - 1893 *Primitive Methodist Church, Stratford Road/Wilton Road, Sparkhill 1895 *The Morton Hall, Newmilns, East Ayrshire 1896-97 *Technical Schools, Halesowen 1896-97 *New Connexion Church, Brid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roof Lantern
A roof lantern is a Daylighting (architecture), daylighting architectural element. Architectural lanterns are part of a larger roof and provide natural light into the space or room below. In contemporary use it is an architectural skylight structure. A lantern roof will generally mean just the roof of a lantern structure in the West, but has a special meaning in Indian architecture (mostly Buddhist, and stretching into Central Asia and eastern China), where it means a dome-like roof raised by sets of four straight beams placed above each other, "arranged in diminishing squares", and rotated with each set. Normally such a "lantern" is enclosed and provides no light at all. The term ''roof top lantern'' is sometimes used to describe the lamps on roofs of taxis in Japan, designed to reflect the cultural heritage of Japanese people, Japanese paper lanterns. History The glazed lantern was developed during the Middle Ages, one notable medieval example being that atop the 14th-centu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Local Government Act 1894
The Local Government Act 1894 ( 56 & 57 Vict. c. 73) was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in England and Wales outside the County of London. The act followed the reforms carried out at county level under the Local Government Act 1888 ( 51 & 52 Vict. c. 41). The 1894 legislation introduced elected councils at district and parish level. The principal effects of the act were: *The creation a system of urban and rural districts with elected councils. These, along with the town councils of municipal boroughs created earlier in the century, formed a second tier of local government below the existing county councils. *The establishment of elected parish councils in rural areas. *The reform of the boards of guardians of poor law unions. *The entitlement of women who owned property to vote in local elections, become poor law guardians, and act on school boards. The new district councils were based on the existing urban and rural s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
