Bingley Hall

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Bingley House 1830, demolished to build Bingley Hall in 1850

The Bingley Hall in Birmingham was the first purpose-built exhibition hall in Great Britain. It was built in 1850 and burned down in 1984. The International Convention Centre now stands on the site.

The precursor of Bingley Hall was an "Exhibition of the Manufactures of Birmingham and the Midland Counties" in a temporary wooden hall built in the grounds of, and attached to, Bingley House on Broad Street in central Birmingham (which once belonged to banker Charles Lloyd and was visited by Samuel Taylor Coleridge) and opened on 3 September 1849 for visitors to the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival. This exhibition was visited by Charles Darwin, and also on 12 November by Prince Albert and must have contributed to his ideas for the the Great Exhibition of 1851 at the Crystal Palace.

Bingley House was built about 1760 as Byngas Hall and was the home of James Farmer, whose daughter married Charles Lloyd.^[1] The house and its land were bought by a railway company in order to build the railway tunnel for the Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Stour Valley Railway. The house was demolished.

In December 1849, the first Birmingham annual cattle show and poultry show were held in a temporary hall on the corner of Lower Essex Street and Kent Street, but the following year the 2nd shows were held in the new Bingley Hall.

Bingley Hall was built by Messrs Branson and Gwyther (architect J. A. Chatwin^[2]^[3]), for £6,000 in six weeks in 1850, using steel columns surplus to the construction of Euston railway station. It was built in the Roman Doric style using red and blue bricks (the Staffordshire blue bricks being diverted from building the Oxford Street viaduct^[3]). Covering one and a quarter acres internally, it measured 224 feet by 221 feet, used 11,700 feet of 21 inch glass, and had ten entrance doors.

During its life, it was used as a hall for the Birmingham Dog Show, cattle shows, chrysanthemum shows, circus, boxing, cinema, and in its later days for popular music concerts. It had a cycle track used for competitions. It was used as a huge meeting space. Gladstone held a political meeting in November 1888, following Joseph Chamberlain's split from the Liberal Party over Irish Home Rule, and spoke for two hours. The speech was recorded by the journal Political World on an Edison phonograph shipped from New York – the first political speech recorded. The hall had been used repeatedly for meetings and conversions by various non-conformist religions, including the Elim Pentecostal Church in 1930, led by George Jeffreys.

The hall was damaged by fire at the Midland Caravan, Camping and Leisure Exhibition in January 1984 and demolished,^[1] its functionality having been replaced by the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) just outside the city in Solihull. The International Convention Centre and Symphony Hall now stand in its place.

[edit] References

^ ^a ^b Norman Bartlam (2002). Broad Street Birmingham. Sutton Publishing. ISBN 0-7509-2874-3.
^ Birmingham Buildings, The Architectural Story of a Midland City, Bryan Little, 1971, ISBN 0-7153-5295-4
^ ^a ^b The Life Story of J. A. Chatwin FRIBA, FSA.Scot 1830-1907, P. B. Chatwin, Oxford University Press, 1952

A History of Birmingham, Chris Upton, 1993, ISBN 0-85033-870-0
The Making of Birmingham: Being a History of the Rise and Growth of the Midland Metropolis, Robert K. Dent, Published by J. L. Allday, 1894
A History of the County of Warwick, Volume 7 – The City of Birmingham, ed. W. B. Stephens, University of London Institute of Historical Research, Oxford University Press, 1964