Local History: Narrowboats

About Narrowboats

A narrowboat is a particular type of canal boat, built to fit the narrow locks of the United Kingdom. The UK’s canal system provided a nationwide transport network during the Industrial Revolution, but with the advent of the railways, commercial canal traffic gradually diminished and the last regular long-distance transportation of goods had virtually disappeared by 1970. However, some commercial traffic continued. From the 1970’s onward narrowboats were gradually being converted into permanent residences or as holiday lettings. Currently, about 8580 narrowboats are registered as permanent homes on Britain’s waterway system and represent a growing alternative community living on semi-permanent moorings or continuously cruising.

For any boat to enter a narrow lock, it must be under 7 feet (2.13 m) wide, so most narrowboats are nominally 6 feet 10 inches (2.08 m) wide. A narrowboat’s maximum length is generally 72 feet (21.95 m), as anything longer will be unable to navigate much of the British canal network because the nominal maximum length of locks is 75 feet (22.86 m). Some locks are shorter than 72 feet (21.95 m), so to access the entire canal network the maximum length is 57 feet (17.37 m).

The first narrow boats played a vital role in the economic changes of the British Industrial Revolution. They were wooden boats drawn by a horse walking on the canal towpath led by a crew member. Horses were gradually replaced by steam and then diesel engines. By the end of the 19th century, it was common practice to paint roses and castles on narrowboats and their fixtures and fittings. This tradition has continued into the 21st century, but not all narrowboats have such decorations.

Modern narrowboats are used for holidays, weekend breaks, touring, or as permanent or part-time residences. Usually, they have steel hulls and a steel superstructure. The hull’s flat base is usually 10mm thick, the hull sides 6mm or 8mm, the cabin sides 6mm, and the roof 4mm or 6mm. The number of boats has been rising, with the number of licensed boats (not all of them narrowboats) on canals and rivers managed by the Canal & River Trust (CRT) estimated at about 27,000 in 2006; by 2019, this had risen to 34,367. Although a small number of steel narrowboats dispense with the need for a rear steering deck entirely, by imitating some river cruisers in providing wheel steering from a central cockpit, most narrowboats’ steering is by a tiller on the stern. There are three major configurations for the stern: traditional stern, cruiser stern and semi-traditional stern.

Narrowboats are Category D boats intended only for navigating rivers, canals and small lakes; but some intrepid boaters have crossed the English Channel in a narrowboat.

Terminology

The narrowboat (one word) definition in the Oxford English Dictionary is:

“A British canal boat of traditional long, narrow design, steered with a tiller; spec. one not exceeding 7 feet (approx. 2.1 metres) in width or 72 feet (approx. 21.9 metres) in length.”

Earlier quotations listed in the Oxford English Dictionary use the term “narrow boat”, with the most recent, a quotation from an advertisement in Canal Boat & Inland Waterways in 1998, uses “narrowboat”.

The single word “narrowboat” has been adopted by authorities such as the Canal and River Trust, Scottish Canals and the authoritative magazine Waterways World to refer to all boats built in the style and tradition of commercial boats that were able to fit in the narrow canal locks.

Although some narrow boats are built to a design based on river barges and many conform to the strict definition of the term, it is incorrect to refer to a narrowboat (or narrow boat) as a widebeam or as a barge, both of which are definable by their greater width. In the context of British inland waterways, a barge is usually a much wider, cargo-carrying boat or a modern boat modelled on one, certainly more than 7 feet (2.13 m) wide.

Another historic term for a narrow boat is a long boat, which has been noted in the Midlands and especially on the River Severn and connecting waterways to Birmingham.

Usage has not quite settled as regards (a) boats based on narrowboat design, but too wide for narrow canals, or (b) boats the same width as narrowboats but based on other types of boats.

Narrowboats may have ship prefix NB.

Size

The key distinguishing feature of a narrowboat is its width, which must be less than 7 feet (2.13 m) wide to navigate British narrow canals. Some old boats are very close to this limit (often built 7 feet 1+1⁄2 inches or 2.17 metres or slightly wider), and can have trouble using certain narrow locks whose width has been reduced over time because of subsidence. Modern boats are usually produced to a maximum of 6 feet 10 inches (2.08 m) wide to guarantee easy passage throughout the complete system.

Because of their slenderness, some narrowboats seem very long. The maximum length is about 72 feet (21.95 m), which matches the length of the longest locks on the system. Modern narrowboats tend to be shorter, to permit cruising anywhere on the connected network of British canals, including on canals built for wider, but shorter, boats. The shortest lock on the main network is Salterhebble Middle Lock on the Calder and Hebble Navigation, at about 56 feet (17.07 m) long. However, the C&H is a wide canal, so the lock is about 14 feet 2 inches (4.32 m) wide. This makes the largest go-anywhere-on-the-network narrowboat slightly longer (about 58 feet or 17.68 metres) than the straight length of the lock because it can (with a certain amount of shoehorning) lie diagonally. Some locks on isolated waterways are as short as 40 feet (12.19 m). Where it was possible to avoid going through locks, narrow boats were sometimes built a little larger. Wharf boats or more usually ‘Amptons, operated on the Wolverhampton level of the Birmingham Canal Navigations and were up to 89 feet in length and 7 foot 10.5 inches wide.

Hire fleets on British canals usually consist of narrow boats of varying lengths from 30 feet (9.14 m) upwards, to allow parties of different numbers or varying budgets to be able to hire a boat and get afloat.

The Development Of Traditional Working Boats

The first narrowboats played a key part in the economic changes of the British Industrial Revolution. They were wooden boats drawn by a horse walking on the canal towpath led by a crew member, often a child. Narrowboats were chiefly designed for carrying cargo, though some packet boats carried passengers, luggage, mail and parcels.

The first canals to feature locks in the now standard size were the canals designed by James Brindley and approved by Parliament in 1766, including the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal and Trent and Mersey Canal. Although construction took many years, the lock size became standard for many canal-building projects.

Boatmen’s families originally lived ashore, but in the 1830’s as canals started to suffer competition from the burgeoning railway system, families (especially those of independent single boat owners/skippers) began to live on board, partly because they could no longer afford rents, partly to provide extra hands to work the boats harder, faster and further, partly to keep families together. As late as 1858, a Household Words article states that “the Grand Junction Canal company did not allow the boatmen’s families on board.” The crew of the non-stopping flyboat in the article (skipper, two crew and a youth) is said to be typical.

The rear portion of the boat became the boatman’s cabin, familiar from picture postcards and museums, famous for its space-saving ingenuity and interior made attractive by a warm stove, a steaming kettle, gleaming brass, fancy lace, painted housewares and decorated plates. Such descriptions rarely consider the actual comfort of a (sometimes large) family, working brutally hard and long days, sleeping in one tiny cabin. However many shore-bound workers endured harder indoor trades in less healthy conditions and in worse accommodation, where the family was separated for long hours rather than being together all day. The lifestyle afloat, by definition itinerant, made it impossible for children to attend school. Most boat people were effectively illiterate and ostracised by those living on the bank, who considered themselves superior.

As steam and diesel progressively replaced the tow-horse in the early years of the 20th century, it became possible to move even more cargo with fewer hands by towing a second, un-powered boat, referred to as a butty, buttyboat or butty boat. Although there was no longer a horse to maintain, the butty had to be steered while being towed. So that the butty boatman could lengthen or shorten the towline as needed, the towline wasn’t tied off on the bow, instead travelled over the buttyboat through permanent running blocks on stands or retractable middle masts and managed in the stern. On a wide canal, such as the Grand Union Canal, the pair could be roped side-to-side (breasted up) and handled as a unit through working locks.

Cargo-carrying by narrow boat diminished from 1945 and the last regular long-distance traffic disappeared in 1970. However, some traffic continued into the 1980’s and beyond. Two million tonnes of aggregate were carried on the Grand Union (River Soar) between 1976 and 1996, latterly using wide beam barges. Aggregate continues to be carried between Denham and West Drayton on the (wide) Grand Union Canal and on the tidal estuary of Bow Creek (which is the eventual outflow of the Lee & Stort Navigation).

A few people are doing their best in the 21st century to keep the tradition of canal-borne cargo-carrying alive, mostly by one-off deliveries rather than regular runs, or by selling goods such as coal to other boaters. Enthusiasts remain dedicated to restoring the remaining old narrow boats, often as members of the Historic Narrow Boat Owners Club. There are many replicas, such as Hadar, ornately painted with traditional designs, usually of roses and castles. Boats not horse-drawn may have a refurbished, slow-revving, vintage semi-diesel engine. There are some steam-driven narrow boats such as the ex-Fellows Morton & Clayton steamer President.

Painted Decoration

By the end of the 19th century, it was common practice to paint roses and castles on narrow boats and their fixtures and fittings. Common sites include the doors to the cabin, the water can or barrel and the side of the boat along with ornate lettering giving the boat’s name and owner. This tradition did not happen in all regions, the Chesterfield Canal being one waterway where narrow boats never bore such decorations.

The origin of the roses and castles found on canal boats is unclear. The first written reference to them appears to be in an 1858 edition of the magazine Household Words in one of a series of articles titled “On the Canal”, showing that the art form must have existed by this date. For some time, a popular suggestion was that it had some form of Romani origin; however, there does not appear to be a significant link between the Romani and boating communities. Other suggestions include the transfer of styles from the clock-making industry (in particular the decoration on the face), the japanning industry or the pottery industry. There is certainly a similarity in style and a geographical overlap, but no solid proof of a link. There are similar styles of folk art in Scandinavia, Germany, Turkey and Bangladesh.

In the 18th century, similar Dutch Hindeloopen paintwork would only have been a sailing barge journey away from the Thames. There is also an article in the Midland Daily Telegraph on July 22nd 1914 that credits the practice of painting of water cans, at least, to a Mr Arthur Atkins.

While the practice declined as commercial use of the canals dwindled, it has seen something of a revival in recent times with the emergence of leisure boating. Narrowboat decorations with roses and castle themes are a common sight on today’s canals, although these may utilise cheaper printed vinyl transfers in place of the traditional craft of hand-painted designs.

Modern Narrowboats

The number of licensed boats on canals and rivers managed by the Canal & River Trust (CRT), a charitable trust, formerly British Waterways, was estimated at about 27,000 in 2006. By 2014 this number had risen to over 30,000. There were perhaps another 5,000 unlicensed boats kept in private moorings or on other waterways in 2006. Most boats on CRT waterways are steel (or occasionally, aluminium) cruisers popularly referred to as narrowboats.

Modern leisure narrowboats are used for holidays, weekend breaks, touring, and as permanent or part-time residences. Usually, they have steel hulls and a steel superstructure, but when they were first developed for leisure use in the 1970’s glass reinforced plastic (fibre-glass) or timber was often used above gunwale height. Newer narrowboats, say post-1990, are usually powered by modern diesel engines and may be fitted inside to a high standard. There will be at least 6 feet (1.8 m) internal headroom and often or usually similar domestic facilities as land homes: central heating, flush toilets, shower or even bath, four-ring hobs, oven, grill, microwave oven, and refrigerator; some may have satellite television and mobile broadband, using 4G technology. Externally, their resemblance to traditional boats can vary from a faithful imitation (false rivets, and copies of traditional paintwork) through interpretation (clean lines and simplified paintwork) through to a free-style approach which does not try to pretend in any way that this is a traditional boat.

They are owned by individuals, shared by a group of friends (or by a more formally organised syndicate), rented out by holiday firms, or used as cruising hotels. A few boats are lived on permanently: either based in one place (though long-term moorings for residential narrowboats are currently very difficult to find) or continuously moving around the network (perhaps with a fixed location for the coldest months, when many stretches of the canal are closed by repair works or stoppages).

A support infrastructure has developed to provide services to the leisure boats, with some narrowboats being used as platforms to provide services such as engine maintenance and boat surveys; while some others are used as fuel tenders, that provide diesel, solid fuel (coal and wood) and Calor Gas.

Types

On almost all narrowboats steering is by tiller, as was the case on all working narrow boats. The steerer stands at the stern of the boat, aft of the hatchway and/or rear doors at the top of the steps up from the cabin. The steering area comes in three basic types, each meeting different needs of maximising internal space; having a more traditional appearance; having a big enough rear deck for everyone to enjoy summer weather or long evenings; or protection outside in bad weather. Each type has its advocates. However, the boundaries are not fixed, and some boats blur the categories as new designers try out different arrangements and combinations.

Traditional Stern

Many modern canal boats retain the traditional layout of a small open, unguarded counter or deck behind the rear doors from which the crew can step onto land. It is possible to steer from the counter, but this is not very safe, with the propeller churning below only one missed step away. The tiller extension allows the steerer to stand in safety on the top step, forward of the rear doors. On a working boat, this step would have been over the top of the coal box. On cold days, the steerer can even close the rear doors behind themselves, and be in relative comfort, their lower body in the warmth of the cabin, and only their upper body emerging from the hatchway and exposed to the elements. In good weather, many trad-stern steerers sit up on the hatchway edge, a high vantage point giving good all-around visibility. On trad boats, the bow well-deck forms the main outside viewing area, because the traditional stern is not large enough for anyone other than the steerer to stand on safely. Internally, trads may have an engine room forward of a traditional boatman’s cabin, or an enclosed engine tucked away out of sight and the increased living space this brings.

Cruiser Stern

The name for this style arises from the large open rear deck resembling that of the large rear cockpits common on glass-fibre (glass-reinforced plastic or GRP) river cruisers which in turn derives from elliptical sterns used on cruisers and larger warships in the 20th century. At the stern, a cruiser narrowboat looks very different from traditional boats: the hatch and rear doors are considerably further forward than on a trad, creating a large open deck between the counter and rear doors, protected by a railing (perhaps with built-in seating) around back and sides. The large rear deck provides a good al fresco dining area or social space, allowing people to congregate on the deck in good weather and the summer holiday season.

In winter (or less than perfect weather in summer) the steerer may be unprotected from the elements. The lack of an enclosed engine room means that engine heat does not contribute to keeping the boat warm and there may be wasted space above the deck area. A cruiser stern allows the engine to be located under the deck, rather than in the body of the boat. Although this may make access to the engine more of a nuisance (due to weather considerations) the whole deck can usually be lifted off in whole or in sections, allowing the operative to stand inside the engine bay, the cruiser stern has a major advantage that the engine is located entirely outside the living space. In this configuration also, it is common to find that the engine bay contains batteries, isolator switching, fuel tanks and seldom-used kit, spares and equipment.

Semi-Traditional Stern

A semi–traditional stern is a compromise to gain some of the social benefits of a cruiser stern while retaining a more traditional design and providing some protection for the steerer in bad weather or in cooler seasons. As with the cruiser stern, the deck is extended back from the hatch and rear doors, but in this case, most of the deck is protected at the sides by walls which extend back from the cabin sides – giving a more sheltered area for the steerer and companions, usually with lockers to sit on. The engine is located under the deck, much like a cruiser, again allowing a separation between the cabin and the engine bay, with the steps down to the cabin being located past the false sides of the semi-trad social area.

A Butty Stern

A butty boat is an unpowered boat traditionally with a larger rudder with (usually) a wooden tiller (known as an elum, a corruption of helm) as the steering does not benefit from the force of water generated by the propeller. The tiller is usually removed and reversed in the rudder-post socket to get it out of the way when moored. A few butty boats have been converted into powered narrowboats like NB Sirius. The term butty is derived from the dialect word buddy, meaning companion.

Centre Cockpit

While the vast majority of narrowboats have tiller steering at the stern, a small number of steel narrowboats dispense with the need for a rear steering deck entirely, by imitating some river cruisers in providing wheel steering from a central cockpit. This layout has the advantage (as many Dutch barges) of enabling an aft cabin to be separate from the forward accommodation.

National Organisations

Scottish Canals.

Inland Waterways Association.

National Association of Boat Owners (NABO).

National Community Boats Association (NCBA).

The Canal & River Trust.

Blog Posts

Books: The Allcotts By Jeffrey Allen

Notes And Links

The narrowboat interior image above is unknown copyright and was taken from here.

The modern narrowboats for leisure cruising image above is the copyright of photographer Roger Haworth and you can find more great work from him by clicking here.

The historic working narrowboats image above is the copyright of photographer G-Man and you can find more great work from him by clicking here.

The Horse-drawn narrowboat image above is, as far as I know, the copyright of photographer Mike Fascione.

The narrowboat decoration image above is the copyright of photographer Laurence White.

The modern narrowboats on the Kennet and Avon Canal image above is the copyright of photographer Per Palmkvist Knudsen.

The traditional stern narrowboats image above is the copyright of photographer Jongleur100 and you can find more great work from him by clicking here.

The cruiser stern narrowboat decoration image above is the copyright of photographer Norman Rogers.

The semi-traditional stern image above is, as far as I know, the copyright of photographer Mark Ahsmann.

The narrowboat with a centre cockpit image above is the copyright of photographer PBS.

All the above images were found on Wikipedia with the exception of the Narrowboat interior one.

English Pride: The English Language

I am English, NOT British, Not European, ENGLISH, AND PROUD and I class myself as an English patriot.

You can read more blog articles about England and the English, like the one on here, via my English Pride Index below and click the link to get back to the English Pride page.

The English Language

English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, originally spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the area of Great Britain that later took their name, England. Both names derive from Anglia, a peninsula on the Baltic Sea (which is not to be confused with East Anglia, the eastern part of England that comprises the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex). English is most closely related to Frisian and Low Saxon, while its vocabulary has been significantly influenced by other Germanic languages, particularly Old Norse (a North Germanic language), as well as by Old Norman, French and Latin.

English has developed over the course of more than 1,400 years. The earliest forms of English, a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century, are collectively called Old English. Middle English began in the late 11th century with the Norman conquest of England; this was a period in which English was influenced by Old French, in particular through its Old Norman dialect. Early Modern English began in the late 15th century with the introduction of the printing press to London, the printing of the King James Bible and the start of the Great Vowel Shift.

Modern English has been spreading around the world since the 17th century by the worldwide influence of the British Empire and the United States. Through all types of printed and electronic media of these countries, English has become the leading language of international discourse and the lingua franca in many regions and professional contexts such as science, navigation and law. Modern English grammar is the result of a gradual change from a typical Indo-European dependent-marking pattern, with rich inflectional morphology and relatively free word order, to a mostly analytic pattern with little inflection, a fairly fixed subject–verb–object word order and a complex syntax. Modern English relies more on auxiliary verbs and word order for the expression of complex tenses, aspect and mood, as well as passive constructions, interrogatives and some negation.

English is the most spoken language in the world (if Chinese is divided into various variants) and the third-most spoken native language in the world, after Standard Chinese and Spanish. It is the most widely learned second language and is either the official language or one of the official languages in almost 60 sovereign states. There are more people who have learned English as a second language than there are native speakers. As of 2005, it was estimated that there were over 2 billion speakers of English. English is the majority native language in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand (see Anglosphere) and Ireland, an official language and the main language of Singapore, and it is widely spoken in some areas of the Caribbean, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Oceania. It is a co-official language of the United Nations, the European Union and many other world and regional international organisations. It is the most widely spoken Germanic language, accounting for at least 70% of speakers of this Indo-European branch. English speakers are called “Anglophones”. There is much variability among the many accents and dialects of English used in different countries and regions in terms of phonetics and phonology, and sometimes also vocabulary, idioms, grammar, and spelling, but it does not typically prevent understanding by speakers of other dialects and accents, although mutual unintelligibility can occur at extreme ends of the dialect continuum.

Classification Of The English Language

English is an Indo-European language and belongs to the West Germanic group of the Germanic languages. Old English originated from a Germanic tribal and linguistic continuum along the Frisian North Sea coast, whose languages gradually evolved into the Anglic languages in the British Isles, and into the Frisian languages and Low German/Low Saxon on the continent. The Frisian languages, which together with the Anglic languages form the Anglo-Frisian languages, are the closest living relatives of English. Low German/Low Saxon is also closely related, and sometimes English, the Frisian languages, and Low German are grouped together as the Ingvaeonic (North Sea Germanic) languages, though this grouping remains debated. Old English evolved into Middle English, which in turn evolved into Modern English. Particular dialects of Old and Middle English also developed into a number of other Anglic languages, including Scots and the extinct Fingallian and Forth and Bargy (Yola) dialects of Ireland.

Like Icelandic and Faroese, the development of English in the British Isles isolated it from the continental Germanic languages and influences, and it has since diverged considerably. English is not mutually intelligible with any continental Germanic language, differing in vocabulary, syntax, and phonology, although some of these, such as Dutch or Frisian, do show strong affinities with English, especially with its earlier stages.

Unlike Icelandic and Faroese, which were isolated, the development of English was influenced by a long series of invasions of the British Isles by other peoples and languages, particularly Old Norse and Norman French. These left a profound mark of their own on the language so that English shows some similarities in vocabulary and grammar with many languages outside its linguistic clades—but it is not mutually intelligible with any of those languages either. Some scholars have argued that English can be considered a mixed language or a creole—a theory called the Middle English creole hypothesis. Although the great influence of these languages on the vocabulary and grammar of Modern English is widely acknowledged, most specialists in language contact do not consider English to be a true mixed language.

English is classified as a Germanic language because it shares innovations with other Germanic languages such as Dutch, German, and Swedish. These shared innovations show that the languages have descended from a single common ancestor called Proto-Germanic. Some shared features of Germanic languages include the division of verbs into strong and weak classes, the use of modal verbs, and the sound changes affecting Proto-Indo-European consonants, known as Grimm’s and Verner’s laws. English is classified as an Anglo-Frisian language because Frisian and English share other features, such as the palatalisation of consonants that were velar consonants in Proto-Germanic.

History Of The English Language

Proto-Germanic To Old English

The earliest form of English is called Old English or Anglo-Saxon (c. year 550–1066). Old English developed from a set of West Germanic dialects, often grouped as Anglo-Frisian or North Sea Germanic, and originally spoken along the coasts of Frisia, Lower Saxony and southern Jutland by Germanic peoples known to the historical record as the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. From the 5th century, the Anglo-Saxons settled Britain as the Roman economy and administration collapsed. By the 7th century, the Germanic language of the Anglo-Saxons became dominant in Britain, replacing the languages of Roman Britain (43–409): Common Brittonic, a Celtic language, and Latin brought to Britain by the Roman occupation. England and English (originally Ænglaland and Ænglisc) are named after the Angles.

Old English was divided into four dialects: the Anglian dialects (Mercian and Northumbrian) and the Saxon dialects, Kentish and West Saxon. Through the educational reforms of King Alfred in the 9th century and the influence of the kingdom of Wessex, the West Saxon dialect became the standard written variety. The epic poem Beowulf is written in West Saxon, and the earliest English poem, Cædmon’s Hymn, is written in Northumbrian. Modern English developed mainly from Mercian, but the Scots language developed from Northumbrian. A few short inscriptions from the early period of Old English were written using a runic script. By the 6th century, a Latin alphabet was adopted, written with half-uncial letterforms. It included the runic letters wynn ⟨ƿ⟩ and thorn ⟨þ⟩, and the modified Latin letters eth ⟨ð⟩, and ash ⟨æ⟩.

Old English is essentially a distinct language from Modern English and is virtually impossible for 21st-century unstudied English-speakers to understand. Its grammar was similar to that of modern German, and its closest relative is Old Frisian. Nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and verbs had many more inflectional endings and forms, and word order was much freer than in Modern English. Modern English has case forms in pronouns (he, him, his) and has a few verb inflections (speak, speaks, speaking, spoke, spoken), but Old English had case endings in nouns as well, and verbs had more person and number endings.

The translation of Matthew 8:20 from 1000 shows examples of case endings (nominative plural, accusative plural, genitive singular) and a verb ending (present plural):

Foxas habbað holu and heofonan fuglas nest

Fox-as habb-að hol-u and heofon-an fugl-as nest-∅

fox-nom.pl have-prs.pl hole-acc.pl and heaven-gen.sg bird-nom.pl nest-acc.pl

“Foxes have holes and the birds of heaven nests”

Middle English

From the 8th to the 12th century, Old English gradually transformed through language contact into Middle English. Middle English is often arbitrarily defined as beginning with the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066, but it developed further in the period from 1200 to 1450.

First, the waves of Norse colonisation of northern parts of the British Isles in the 8th and 9th centuries put Old English into intense contact with Old Norse, a North Germanic language. Norse influence was strongest in the north-eastern varieties of Old English spoken in the Danelaw area around York, which was the centre of Norse colonisation; today these features are still particularly present in Scots and Northern English. However the centre of norsified English seems to have been in the Midlands around Lindsey, and after 920 CE when Lindsey was reincorporated into the Anglo-Saxon polity, Norse features spread from there into English varieties that had not been in direct contact with Norse speakers. An element of Norse influence that persists in all English varieties today is the group of pronouns beginning with th- (they, them, their) which replaced the Anglo-Saxon pronouns with h– (hie, him, hera).

With the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the now norsified Old English language was subject to contact with Old French, in particular with the Old Norman dialect. The Norman language in England eventually developed into Anglo-Norman. Because Norman was spoken primarily by the elites and nobles, while the lower classes continued speaking Anglo-Saxon (English), the main influence of Norman was the introduction of a wide range of loanwords related to politics, legislation and prestigious social domains. Middle English also greatly simplified the inflectional system, probably in order to reconcile Old Norse and Old English, which were inflectionally different but morphologically similar. The distinction between nominative and accusative cases was lost except in personal pronouns, the instrumental case was dropped, and the use of the genitive case was limited to indicating possession. The inflectional system regularised many irregular inflectional forms, and gradually simplified the system of agreement, making word order less flexible. In the Wycliffe Bible of the 1380s, the verse Matthew 8:20 was written: Foxis han dennes, and briddis of heuene han nestis. Here the plural suffix –n on the verb have is still retained, but none of the case endings on the nouns are present. By the 12th century Middle English was fully developed, integrating both Norse and French features; it continued to be spoken until the transition to early Modern English around 1500. Middle English literature includes Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, and Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. In the Middle English period, the use of regional dialects in writing proliferated, and dialect traits were even used for effect by authors such as Chaucer.

Early Modern English

The next period in the history of English was Early Modern English (1500–1700). Early Modern English was characterised by the Great Vowel Shift (1350–1700), inflectional simplification, and linguistic standardisation.

The Great Vowel Shift affected the stressed long vowels of Middle English. It was a chain shift, meaning that each shift triggered a subsequent shift in the vowel system. Mid and open vowels were raised, and closed vowels were broken into diphthongs. For example, the word bite was originally pronounced as the word beet is today, and the second vowel in the word about was pronounced as the word boot is today. The Great Vowel Shift explains many irregularities in spelling since English retains many spellings from Middle English, and it also explains why English vowel letters have very different pronunciations from the same letters in other languages.

English began to rise in prestige, relative to Norman French, during the reign of Henry V. Around 1430, the Court of Chancery in Westminster began using English in its official documents, and a new standard form of Middle English, known as Chancery Standard, developed from the dialects of London and the East Midlands. In 1476, William Caxton introduced the printing press to England and began publishing the first printed books in London, expanding the influence of this form of English. Literature from the Early Modern period includes the works of William Shakespeare and the translation of the Bible commissioned by King James I. Even after the vowel shift the language still sounded different from Modern English: for example, the consonant clusters /kn ɡn sw/ in knight, gnat, and sword were still pronounced. Many of the grammatical features that a modern reader of Shakespeare might find quaint or archaic represent the distinct characteristics of Early Modern English.

In the 1611 King James Version of the Bible, written in Early Modern English, Matthew 8:20 says, “The Foxes haue holes and the birds of the ayre haue nests.” This exemplifies the loss of case and its effects on sentence structure (replacement with subject-verb–object word order, and the use of of instead of the non-possessive genitive), and the introduction of loanwords from French (ayre) and word replacements (bird originally meaning “nestling” had replaced OE fugol).

Spread Of Modern English

By the late 18th century, the British Empire had spread English through its colonies and geopolitical dominance. Commerce, science and technology, diplomacy, art, and formal education all contributed to English becoming the first truly global language. English also facilitated worldwide international communication. England continued to form new colonies, and these later developed their own norms for speech and writing. English was adopted in parts of North America, parts of Africa, Australasia, and many other regions. When they obtained political independence, some of the newly independent nations that had multiple indigenous languages opted to continue using English as the official language to avoid the political and other difficulties inherent in promoting any one indigenous language above the others. In the 20th century, the growing economic and cultural influence of the United States and its status as a superpower following the Second World War has, along with worldwide broadcasting in English by the BBC and other broadcasters, caused the language to spread across the planet much faster. In the 21st century, English is more widely spoken and written than any language has ever been.

As Modern English developed, explicit norms for standard usage were published and spread through official media such as public education and state-sponsored publications. In 1755 Samuel Johnson published his A Dictionary of the English Language, which introduced standard spellings of words and usage norms. In 1828, Noah Webster published the American Dictionary of the English language to try to establish a norm for speaking and writing American English that was independent of the British standard. Within Britain, non-standard or lower class dialect features were increasingly stigmatised, leading to the quick spread of the prestige varieties among the middle classes.

In modern English, the loss of grammatical case is almost complete (it is now only found in pronouns, such as he and him, she and her, who and whom), and SVO word order is mostly fixed. Some changes, such as the use of do-support, have become universalised. (Earlier English did not use the word “do” as a general auxiliary as Modern English does; at first, it was only used in question constructions, and even then was not obligatory. Now, do-support with the verb have is becoming increasingly standardised.) The use of progressive forms in –ing, appears to be spreading to new constructions, and forms such as had been being built are becoming more common. Regularisation of irregular forms also slowly continues (e.g. dreamed instead of dreamt), and analytical alternatives to inflectional forms are becoming more common (e.g. more polite instead of polite). British English is also undergoing change under the influence of American English, fuelled by the strong presence of American English in the media and the prestige associated with the US as a world power.

Read more about The English Language here.

The above articles were taken from Wikipedia and are subject to change.

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The Culture Of England

The culture of England is defined by the cultural norms of England and the English people. Owing to England’s influential position within the United Kingdom it can sometimes be difficult to differentiate English culture from the culture of the United Kingdom as a whole. However, since Anglo-Saxon times, England has had its own unique culture, apart from Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish culture.

As the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, many of the world’s acclaimed scientists and technological advancements originated from England. England has also played an important role in cinema, literature, technology, engineering, democracy, philosophy, music, science and mathematics. England has long been known for the accomplishments of a wide variety of literature and poetry.

Humour, tradition, and good manners are characteristics commonly associated with being English. The secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport is the government minister responsible for the cultural life of England.

The Architecture Of England

Many ancient standing stone monuments were erected during the prehistoric period; amongst the best known are Stonehenge, Avebury, Devil’s Arrows, Rudston Monolith and Castlerigg. With the introduction of Ancient Roman architecture, there was a development of basilicas, baths, amphitheatres, triumphal arches, villas, Roman temples, Roman roads, Roman forts, stockades and aqueducts. It was the Romans who founded the first cities and towns such as London, Bath, York, Chester and St Albans. Perhaps the best-known example is Hadrian’s Wall stretching right across northern England. Another well-preserved example is the Roman Baths at Bath, Somerset.

English architecture begins with the architecture of the Anglo-Saxons. At least fifty surviving English churches are of Anglo-Saxon origin, although in some cases the Anglo-Saxon part is small and much-altered. All except one timber church are built of stone or brick, and in some cases show evidence of reused Roman work. The architectural character of Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical buildings ranges from Coptic-influenced architecture in the early period, through Early Christian basilica influenced architecture, to (in the later Anglo-Saxon period) an architecture characterised by pilaster-strips, blank arcading, baluster shafts and triangular-headed openings.

Many cathedrals of England are ancient, dating from as far back as around 700. They are a major aspect of the country’s artistic heritage. Medieval Christianity included the veneration of saints, with pilgrimages to places where particular saints’ relics were interred. The possession of the relics of a popular saint was a source of funds for an individual church, as the faithful made donations and benefices in the hope that they might receive spiritual aid, a blessing or a healing from the presence of the physical remains of the holy person. Among those churches to benefit in particular were St Albans Abbey, which contained the relics of England’s first Christian martyr; Ripon with the shrine of its founder St. Wilfrid; Durham, which was built to house the body of Saints Cuthbert of Lindisfarne and Aidan; Ely with the shrine of St. Ethelreda; Westminster Abbey with the magnificent shrine of its founder St. Edward the Confessor; at Chichester, the remains of St. Richard; and at Winchester, those of St. Swithun.

All these saints brought pilgrims to their churches, but among them, the most renowned was Thomas Becket, the late Archbishop of Canterbury, assassinated by henchmen of King Henry II in 1170. As a place of pilgrimage, Canterbury was, in the 13th century, second only to Santiago de Compostela. In the 1170s Gothic architecture was introduced at Canterbury and Westminster Abbey. Over the next 400 years, it developed in England, sometimes in parallel with and influenced by Continental forms, but generally with great local diversity and originality.

Following the Norman Conquest, Romanesque architecture (known here as Norman architecture) superseded Anglo-Saxon architecture; later there was a period of transition into English Gothic architecture (of which there are three periods, Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular). Norman architecture was built on a vast scale from the 11th century onwards in the form of castles and churches to help impose Norman authority upon their dominion. Many castles remain from the medieval period, such as Windsor Castle (longest-occupied castle in Europe), Bodiam Castle (a moated castle), Tower of London, and Warwick Castle. Expanding on the Norman base there was also castles, palaces, great houses, universities and parish churches.

English Gothic architecture flourished from the 12th to the early 16th century, and famous examples include Westminster Abbey, the traditional place of coronation for the British monarch, which also has a long tradition as a venue for royal weddings, Canterbury Cathedral, one of the oldest and most famous Christian structures in England; Salisbury Cathedral, which has the tallest church spire in the UK; and York Minster, which is the largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe.

The secular medieval architecture throughout England has left a legacy of large stone castles. The invention of gunpowder and canons made castles redundant, and the English Renaissance which followed facilitated the development of new artistic styles for domestic architecture, notably Tudor, Elizabethan, Jacobean, English Baroque, Queen Anne and Palladian. Architecture during the Tudor dynasty flourished with magnificent royal palaces, such as Nonsuch Palace, Palace of Placentia, Hampton Court Palace, Hatfield House, Richmond Palace and Palace of Beaulieu.

One of the most acclaimed English architects was Sir Christopher Wren. He was employed by King Charles II to design and rebuild London and many of its ruined ancient churches following the Great Fire of London in 1666. Georgian and Neoclassical architecture advanced after the Age of Enlightenment, evoking achievements in elegant architecture and city planning; the Royal Crescent at Bath is one of the best examples of this. The Regency of George IV is noted for its elegance and achievements in architecture and urban planning. Regency style is also applied to interior design and decorative arts of the period, typified by elegant furniture and vertically striped wallpaper, and to styles of clothing; for men, as typified by the dandy Beau Brummell and for women the Empire silhouette. In early modern times, there was an influence from Renaissance architecture until by the 18th century. Gothic forms of architecture had been abandoned and various classical styles were adopted. During the Victorian era, Gothic Revival architecture developed in England and was preferred for many types of buildings and city planning. Victorian was widespread with vast innovations and engineering achievements (bridges, canals, railway stations, etc.).

In addition to this, around the same time, the Industrial Revolution paved the way for buildings such as The Crystal Palace. The introduction of the sheet glass method into England by the Chance Brothers in 1832 made possible the production of large sheets of cheap but strong glass, and its use in the Crystal Palace created a structure with the greatest area of glass ever seen in a building. It astonished visitors with its clear walls and ceilings that did not require interior lights. Edwardian followed in the early 20th century. Other buildings such as cathedrals and parish churches are associated with a sense of traditional Englishness, as is often the palatial ‘stately home’. Many people are interested in the English country house and the rural lifestyle, evidenced by the number of visitors to properties managed by English Heritage and the National Trust.

Landscape gardening as developed by Capability Brown set an international trend for the English garden. Gardening, and visiting gardens, are regarded as typically English pursuits. By the end of the 18th century the English garden was being imitated by the French landscape garden, and as far away as St. Petersburg, Russia, in Pavlovsk, the gardens of the future Emperor Paul. It also had a major influence on the form of the public parks and gardens which appeared around the world in the 19th century.

Inspired by the great landscape artists of the seventeenth century, the English garden presented an idealized view of nature. At large country houses, the English garden usually included lakes, sweeps of gently rolling lawns set against groves of trees, and recreations of classical temples, Gothic ruins, bridges, and other picturesque architecture, designed to recreate an idyllic pastoral landscape. The English garden was centred on the English country house, stately homes and parks. English Heritage and the National Trust preserve large gardens and landscape parks throughout the country. The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is held every year by the Royal Horticultural Society and is said to be the largest gardening show in the world.

Following the building of the world’s first seaside pier at Ryde, the pier became fashionable at seaside resorts in England during the Victorian era, peaking in the 1860s with 22 being built in that decade. A symbol of the typical English seaside holiday, by 1914 more than 100 pleasure piers were located around the UK coast. Regarded as being among the finest Victorian architecture, there are still a significant number of seaside piers of architectural merit still standing, although some have been lost, including two at Brighton in East Sussex and one at New Brighton in the Wirral. Two piers, Brighton’s now derelict West Pier and Clevedon Pier, were Grade 1 listed. The Birnbeck Pier in Weston-super-Mare is the only pier in the world linked to an island. The National Piers Society gives a figure of 55 surviving seaside piers in England.

Art And Design Of England

England has Europe’s earliest and northernmost ice-age cave art. Prehistoric art in England largely corresponds with art made elsewhere in contemporary Britain, but early medieval Anglo-Saxon art saw the development of a distinctly English style, and English art continued thereafter to have a distinct character. English art made after the formation in 1707 of the Kingdom of Great Britain may be regarded in most respects simultaneously as art of the United Kingdom. The two periods of outstanding achievement were the 7th and 8th centuries, with the metalwork and jewellery from Sutton Hoo and a series of magnificent illuminated manuscripts, and the final period after about 950, when there was a revival of English culture after the end of the Viking invasions.

As in most of Europe at the time, metalwork was the most highly regarded form of art by the Anglo-Saxons, but hardly any survives – there was enormous plundering of Anglo-Saxon churches, monasteries and the possessions of the dispossessed nobility by the new Norman rulers in their first decades, as well as the Norsemen before them, and the English Reformation after them, and most survivals were once on the continent. Anglo-Saxon taste favoured brightness and colour. Opus Anglicanum (“English work”) was recognised as the finest embroidery in Europe. Perhaps the best known piece of Anglo-Saxon art is the Bayeux Tapestry which was commissioned by a Norman patron from English artists working in the traditional Anglo-Saxon style. Anglo-Saxon artists also worked in fresco, stone, ivory and whalebone (notably the Franks Casket), metalwork (for example the Fuller brooch), glass and enamel. Medieval English painting, mainly religious, had a strong national tradition and was influential in Europe.

The English Reformation, which was antipathetic to art, not only brought this tradition to an abrupt stop but resulted in the destruction of almost all wall paintings. Only illuminated manuscripts now survive in large numbers.

There is in the art of the English Renaissance a strong interest in portraiture, and the portrait miniature was more popular in England than anywhere else. English Renaissance sculpture was mainly architectural and for monumental tombs. Interest in English landscape painting had begun to develop by the time of the 1707 Act of Union. English art was dominated by imported artists throughout much of the Renaissance, but in the 18th century, a native tradition became much admired. It is considered to be typified by landscape painting, such as the work of J.M.W. Turner and John Constable. Portraitists like Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds are also significant.

The first famous native English portrait miniaturist is Nicholas Hilliard (c. 1537–1619), whose work was conservative in style but very sensitive to the character of the sitter; his best works are beautifully executed. The colours are opaque, and gold is used to heighten the effect, while the paintings are on card. They are often signed and have frequently also a Latin motto upon them. Hilliard worked for a while in France, and he is probably identical with the painter alluded to in 1577 as Nicholas Belliart. Hilliard was succeeded by his son Lawrence Hilliard (died 1640); his technique was similar to that of his father but bolder, and his miniatures richer in colour.

Isaac Oliver and his son Peter Oliver succeeded Hilliard. Isaac (c. 1560–1617) was the pupil of Hilliard. Peter (1594–1647) was the pupil of Isaac. The two men were the earliest to give roundness and form to the faces they painted. They signed their best works in monogram and painted not only very small miniatures, but larger ones measuring as much as 10 in × 9 in (250 mm × 230 mm). They copied for Charles I of England (1600–1649) on a small scale many of his famous pictures by the old masters. Samuel Cooper (1609–1672) was a nephew and student of the elder Hoskins and is considered the greatest English portrait miniaturist. He spent much of his time in Paris and Holland, and very little is known of his career. His work has a superb breadth and dignity and has been well called life-size work in little. His portraits of the men of the Puritan epoch are remarkable for their truth to life and strength of handling. His work is frequently signed with his initials, generally in gold, and very often with the addition of the date.

Pictorial satirist William Hogarth pioneered Western sequential art, and political illustrations in this style are often referred to as “Hogarthian”. Following Hogarth, political cartoons developed in England in the late 18th century under the direction of James Gillray. Regarded as one of the two most influential cartoonists (the other is Hogarth), Gillray has been referred to as the father of the political cartoon, with his satirical work calling the King (George III), prime ministers and generals to account. The early 19th century saw the emergence of the Norwich school of painters, the first provincial art movement outside of London. Its prominent members were “founding father” John Crome (1768–1821), John Sell Cotman (1782–1842), James Stark (1794–1859), and Joseph Stannard (1797–1830).

In England, landscapes had initially been mostly backgrounds to portraits. The English tradition was founded by Anthony van Dyck and other mostly Flemish artists working in England, but in the 18th century, the works of Claude Lorrain were keenly collected and influenced not only paintings of landscapes, but the English landscape gardens of Capability Brown and others. In the 18th century, watercolour painting, mostly of landscapes, became an English speciality, with both a buoyant market for professional works and a large number of amateur painters, many following the popular systems found in the books of Alexander Cozens and others. By the beginning of the 19th century, the English artists with the highest modern reputations were mostly dedicated landscape painters, showing the wide range of Romantic interpretations of the English landscape found in the works of John Constable and J.M.W. Turner.

During the Baroque and Rococo periods, the first major native portrait painters of the British school were English painters Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds, who also specialised in clothing their subjects in an eye-catching manner. Gainsborough’s Blue Boy is one of the most famous and recognized portraits of all time, painted with very long brushes and thin oil colour to achieve the shimmering effect of the blue costume. Gainsborough was also noted for his elaborate background settings for his subjects.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood achieved considerable influence after its foundation in 1848 with paintings that concentrated on religious, literary, and genre subjects executed in a colourful and minutely detailed style. Its artists included John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and subsequently Edward Burne-Jones. Also associated with it was the designer William Morris, whose efforts to make beautiful objects affordable for everyone led to his wallpaper and tile designs to some extent defining the Victorian aesthetic and instigating the Arts and Crafts movement. The Royal Society of Arts is an organisation committed to the arts and culture.

The Royal Academy in London is a key organisation for the promotion of the visual arts in England. Major schools of art in England include the six-school University of the Arts London, which includes the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and Chelsea College of Art and Design; Goldsmiths, University of London; the Slade School of Fine Art (part of University College London); the Royal College of Art; and The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art (part of the University of Oxford). The Courtauld Institute of Art is a leading centre for the teaching of the history of art. Important art galleries in the United Kingdom include the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Tate Britain and Tate Modern (the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year).

Heritage And Tourism Of England

A number of umbrella organisations are devoted to the preservation and public access of both natural and cultural heritage, including English Heritage and the National Trust. Membership with them, even on a temporary basis, gives priority free access to their properties thereafter.

English Heritage is a governmental body with a broad remit of managing the historic sites, artefacts and environments of England. It is currently sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. English Heritage manages more than 400 significant buildings and monuments in England. They also maintain a register of thousands of listed buildings, those which are considered of most importance to the historic and cultural heritage of the country.

The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty is a charity that also maintains multiple sites. One of the largest landowners in the United Kingdom, the Trust owns almost 250,000 hectares of land and 780 miles of the coast. Its properties include over 500 historic houses, castles, archaeological and industrial monuments, gardens, parks and nature reserves.

17 of the 25 United Kingdom UNESCO World Heritage Sites fall within England. Some of the best known of these include Hadrian’s Wall, Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites, Tower of London, Jurassic Coast, Westminster, Roman Baths in Bath, Saltaire, Ironbridge Gorge, and Studley Royal Park. The northernmost point of the Roman Empire, Hadrian’s Wall, is the largest Roman artefact anywhere: it runs a total of 73 miles in northern England.

London’s British Museum hosts a collection of more than seven million objects is one of the largest and most comprehensive in the world, sourced from every continent, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its beginning to the present. The library has two of the four remaining copies of the original Magna Carta (the other two copies are held in Lincoln Castle and Salisbury Cathedral) and has a room devoted solely to them. The British Library Sound Archive has over six million recordings, many from the BBC Sound Archive, including Winston Churchill’s wartime speeches.

The British Library in London is the national library and is one of the world’s largest research libraries, holding over 150 million items in all known languages and formats; including around 25 million books. The most senior art gallery is the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, which houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The Tate galleries house the national collections of British and international modern art; they also host the famously controversial Turner Prize. The Ashmolean Museum was founded in 1677 from the personal collection of Elias Ashmole, was set up in the University of Oxford to be open to the public and is considered by some to be the first modern public museum. In 2011 there were more than 1,600 museums in England. Most museums and art galleries are free of charge.

A blue plaque, the oldest historical marker scheme in the world, is a permanent sign installed in a public place in the UK to commemorate a link between that location and a famous person or event. The scheme was the brainchild of politician William Ewart in 1863 and was initiated in 1866.

It was formally established by the Royal Society of Arts in 1867, and since 1986 has been run by English Heritage. The first plaque was unveiled in 1867 to commemorate Lord Byron at his birthplace, 24 Holles Street, Cavendish Square, London. Examples that commemorate events include John Logie Baird’s first demonstration of the television at 22 Frith Street, Westminster, W1, London, and the first sub-4-minute mile run by Roger Bannister on 6 May 1954 at Oxford University’s Iffley Road Track.

Tourism plays a significant part in the economic life of England. In 2018, the United Kingdom as a whole was the world’s 10th most visited country for tourists, and 17 of the United Kingdom’s 25 UNESCO World Heritage Sites fall within England. VisitEngland is the official tourist board for England. VisitEngland’s stated mission is to build England’s tourism product, raise Britain’s profile worldwide, increase the volume and value of tourism exports and develop England and Britain’s visitor economy. In 2020, the Lonely Planet travel guide rated England as the second-best country to visit that year, after Bhutan.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Arts, Heritage and Tourism is the minister with responsibility for over-tourism in England, including museums, art galleries, public libraries and the National Archives.

Literature Of England

Early authors such as Bede and Alcuin wrote in Latin. The period of Old English literature provided the epic poem Beowulf and the fragmentary The Battle of Maldon, the sombre and introspective The Seafarer, The Wanderer, the pious Dream of the Rood, The Order of the World, and the secular prose of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, along with Christian writings such as Judith, Cædmon’s Hymn and hagiographies. Following the Norman conquest, Latin continued amongst the educated classes, as well as Anglo-Norman literature.

Middle English literature emerged with Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales, along with Gower, the Pearl Poet and Langland. William of Ockham and Roger Bacon, who were Franciscans, were major philosophers of the Middle Ages. Julian of Norwich, who wrote Revelations of Divine Love, was a prominent Christian mystic. With the English Renaissance literature in the Early Modern English style appeared. William Shakespeare, whose works include Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, remains one of the most championed authors in English literature.

Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sydney, Thomas Kyd, John Donne, and Ben Jonson are other established authors of the Elizabethan age. Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes wrote on empiricism and materialism, including the scientific method and social contract. Filmer wrote on the Divine Right of Kings. Marvell was the best-known poet of the Commonwealth, while John Milton authored Paradise Lost during the Restoration.

Some of the most prominent philosophers of the Enlightenment were John Locke, Thomas Paine, Samuel Johnson and Jeremy Bentham. More radical elements were later countered by Edmund Burke who is regarded as the founder of conservatism. The poet Alexander Pope with his satirical verse became well regarded. The English played a significant role in romanticism: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, John Keats, Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Blake and William Wordsworth were major figures.

In response to the Industrial Revolution, agrarian writers sought a way between liberty and tradition; William Cobbett, G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc were the main exponents, while the founder of guild socialism, Arthur Penty, and cooperative movement advocate G. D. H. Cole are somewhat related. Empiricism continued through John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell, while Bernard Williams was involved in analytics. Authors from around the Victorian era include Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Rudyard Kipling, Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells and Lewis Carroll. Since then England has continued to produce novelists such as George Orwell, D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, C. S. Lewis, Enid Blyton, Aldous Huxley, Agatha Christie, Terry Pratchett, J. R. R. Tolkien, and J. K. Rowling.

Due to the expansion of English into a world language during the British Empire, literature is now written in English across the world. Writers often associated with England or for expressing Englishness include Shakespeare (who produced two tetralogies of history plays about the English kings), Jane Austen, Arnold Bennett, and Rupert Brooke (whose poem “Grantchester” is often considered quintessentially English). Other writers are associated with specific regions of England; these include Charles Dickens (London), Thomas Hardy (Wessex), A. E. Housman (Shropshire), and the Lake Poets (the Lake District). The English playwright and poet William Shakespeare is widely regarded as the greatest dramatist of all time.

The 20th-century English crime writer Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time. Agatha Christie’s mystery novels are outsold only by Shakespeare and The Bible. Described as “perhaps the 20th century’s best chronicler of English culture”, the non-fiction works of George Orwell include The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the north of England. Orwell’s eleven rules for making tea appear in his essay “A Nice Cup of Tea”, which was published in the London Evening Standard on 12 January 1946.

In 2003 the BBC carried out a UK survey entitled The Big Read to find the “nation’s best-loved novel” of all time, with works by English novelists J. R. R. Tolkien, Jane Austen, Philip Pullman, Douglas Adams and J. K. Rowling making up the top five on the list. In 2005, some 206,000 books were published in the United Kingdom and in 2006 it was the largest publisher of books in the world. The Royal Society of Literature was founded in 1820, by King George IV, to “reward literary merit and excite literary talent”. The society is a cultural tenant at London’s Somerset House.

The Music Of England

England has a long and rich musical history. In the United Kingdom, more people attend live music performances than football matches. The traditional folk music of England is centuries old and has contributed to several genres prominently; mostly sea shanties, jigs, hornpipes and dance music. It has its own distinct variations and regional peculiarities. Ballads featuring Robin Hood, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in the 16th century, are an important artefact, as are John Playford’s The Dancing Master and Robert Harley’s Roxburghe Ballads collections.

Some of the best-known songs are Greensleeves, Pastime with Good Company, Maggie May and Spanish Ladies amongst others. Many nursery rhymes are of English origin such as Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, Roses Are Red, Jack and Jill, London Bridge Is Falling Down, The Grand Old Duke of York, Hey Diddle Diddle and Humpty Dumpty. Traditional English Christmas carols include We Wish You a Merry Christmas, The First Noel, I Saw Three Ships and God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen.

The United Kingdom has, like most European countries, undergone a roots revival in the last half of the 20th century. English music has been an instrumental and leading part of this phenomenon, which peaked at the end of the 1960s and into the 1970s. The English Musical Renaissance was a hypothetical development in the late 19th and early 20th century, when English composers, often those lecturing or trained at the Royal College of Music, were said to have freed themselves from foreign musical influences, to have begun writing in a distinctively national idiom, and to have equalled the achievement of composers in mainland Europe.

The achievements of the Anglican choral tradition following on from 16th-century composers such as Thomas Tallis, John Taverner and William Byrd have tended to overshadow instrumental composition. The semi-operatic innovations of Henry Purcell were significant. Classical music attracted much attention from 1784 with the formation of the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival, which was the longest running classical music festival of its kind until the final concerts in 1912. George Frideric Handel found important royal patrons and enthusiastic public support in England. He spent most of his composing life in London and became a national icon, creating some of the most well-known works of classical music, especially his English oratorios, The Messiah, Solomon, Water Music, and Music for the Royal Fireworks. One of Handel’s four Coronation Anthems, Zadok the Priest (1727), composed for the coronation of George II, has been performed at every subsequent British coronation, traditionally during the sovereign’s anointing. The Royal Academy of Music is the oldest conservatoire in the UK, founded in 1822 by John Fane and Nicolas-Charles Bochsa. It received its royal charter in 1830 from King George IV with the support of the first Duke of Wellington. Famous academy alumni include Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, Sir Elton John and Annie Lennox.

The emergence of figures such as Edward Elgar and Arthur Sullivan in the 19th century showed a new vitality in English music. In the 20th century, Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett emerged as internationally recognised opera composers, and Ralph Vaughan Williams and others collected English folk tunes and adapted them to the concert hall. Cecil Sharp was a leading figure in the English folk revival. The Proms, an annual summer season of daily classical music concerts, is a significant event in British musical life. The Last Night of the Proms features patriotic music.

A new trend emerged from Liverpool in 1962. The Beatles became the most popular musicians of their time, and in the composing duo of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, popularized the concept of the self-contained music act. Before the Beatles, very few popular singers composed the tunes they performed. The “Fab Four” opened the doors for other acts from England such as The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Cream, The Kinks, The Who, Eric Clapton, David Bowie, Queen, Elton John, The Hollies, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Genesis, Dire Straits, Iron Maiden, The Police to the globe. Many musical genres have origins in (or strong associations with) England, such as British invasion, progressive rock, hard rock, Mod, glam rock, heavy metal, Britpop, indie rock, gothic rock, shoegazing, acid house, garage, trip hop, drum and bass and dubstep. The Sex Pistols and The Clash were pioneers of punk rock. Some of England’s leading contemporary artists include George Michael, Sting, Seal, Rod Stewart, The Smiths, The Stone Roses, Oasis, Blur, Radiohead, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Coldplay, Def Leppard, Muse, Arctic Monkeys, Amy Winehouse, Adele and Ed Sheeran.

The Cinema Of England

England (and the UK as a whole) has had a considerable influence on the history of the cinema, producing some of the greatest actors, directors and motion pictures of all time, including Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, David Lean, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, John Gielgud, Peter Sellers, Julie Andrews, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Helen Mirren, Kate Winslet and Daniel Day-Lewis. Hitchcock and Lean are among the most critically acclaimed of all time. Hitchcock’s first thriller, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1926), helped shape the thriller genre in film, while his 1929 film, Blackmail, is often regarded as the first British sound feature film.

Major film studios in England include Pinewood, Elstree and Shepperton. Some of the most commercially successful films of all time have been produced in England, including two of the highest-grossing film franchises (Harry Potter and James Bond). Ealing Studios in London has a claim to being the oldest continuously working film studio in the world. Famous for recording many motion picture film scores, the London Symphony Orchestra first performed film music in 1935.

The BFI Top 100 British films include Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), a film regularly voted the funniest of all time by the UK public. English producers are also active in international co-productions and English actors, directors and crew feature regularly in Hollywood films. Ridley Scott was among a group of English filmmakers, including Tony Scott, Alan Parker, Hugh Hudson and Adrian Lyne, who emerged from making 1970s UK television commercials. The UK film council ranked David Yates, Christopher Nolan, Mike Newell, Ridley Scott and Paul Greengrass the five most commercially successful English directors since 2001. Other contemporary directors from England include Sam Mendes, Guy Ritchie and Steve McQueen. Current actors include Tom Hardy, Daniel Craig, Benedict Cumberbatch and Emma Watson. Acclaimed for his motion-capture work, Andy Serkis opened The Imaginarium Studios in London in 2011. The visual effects company Framestore in London has produced some of the most critically acclaimed special effects in modern film. Many successful Hollywood films have been based on English people, stories or events. The ‘English Cycle’ of Disney animated films include Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book, Robin Hood and Winnie the Pooh.

The Theatre Of England

The peak of English drama and theatre is said to be the Elizabethan Age; a golden age in English history where the arts, drama and creative work flourished. Morality plays emerged as a distinct dramatic form around 1400 and flourished in the early Elizabethan era in England. Characters were often used to represent different ethical ideals. Everyman, for example, includes such figures as Good Deeds, Knowledge and Strength, and this characterisation reinforces the conflict between good and evil for the audience. The Castle of Perseverance (c. 1400–1425) depicts an archetypal figure’s progress from birth through to death. Horestes (c. 1567), a late “hybrid morality” and one of the earliest examples of an English revenge play, brings together the classical story of Orestes with a Vice from the medieval allegorical tradition, alternating comic, slapstick scenes with serious, tragic ones. Also important in this period were the folk dramas of the Mummers Play, performed during the Christmas season. Court masques were particularly popular during the reign of Henry VIII. The first permanent English theatre, the Red Lion, opened in 1567. The first successful theatres, such as The Theatre, opened in 1576. The establishment of large and profitable public theatres was an essential enabling factor in the success of English Renaissance drama.

Archaeological excavations on the foundations of the Rose and the Globe in the late 20th century showed that all the London theatres had individual differences, but their common function necessitated a similar general plan. The public theatres were three stories high and built around an open space at the centre. Usually polygonal in plan to give an overall rounded effect, although the Red Bull and the first Fortune were square. The three levels of inward-facing galleries overlooked the open centre, into which jutted the stage: essentially a platform surrounded on three sides by the audience. The rear side was restricted for the entrances and exits of the actors and seating for the musicians. The upper level behind the stage could be used as a balcony, as in Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra, or as a position from which an actor could harangue a crowd, as in Julius Caesar.

The playhouses were generally built with timber and plaster. Individual theatre descriptions give additional information about their construction, such as flint stones being used to build the Swan. Theatres were also constructed to be able to hold a large number of people. One of the main uses of costume during the Elizabethan era was to make up for the lack of scenery, set, and props on stage. It created a visual effect for the audience, and it was an integral part of the overall performance. Since the main visual appeal on stage were the costumes, they were often bright in colour and visually entrancing. Colours symbolised social hierarchy, and costumes were made to reflect that. For example, if a character was royalty, their costume would include purple. The colours, as well as the different fabrics of the costumes, allowed the audience to know the status of each character when they first appeared on stage.

The growing population of London, the growing wealth of its people, and their fondness for spectacle produced a dramatic literature of remarkable variety, quality, and extent. Genres of the period included the history play, which depicted English or European history. Shakespeare’s plays about the lives of kings, such as Richard III and Henry V, belong to this category, as do Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II and George Peele’s Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First. History plays dealt with more recent events, like A Larum for London which dramatizes the sack of Antwerp in 1576. Tragedy was a very popular genre. Marlowe’s tragedies were exceptionally successful, such as Dr. Faustus and The Jew of Malta. The audiences particularly liked revenge dramas, such as Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy. The four tragedies considered to be Shakespeare’s greatest (Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth) were composed during this period.

Costumes were collected in inventory. More often than not, costumes wouldn’t be made individually to fit the actor. Instead, they would be selected out of the stock that theatre companies would keep. A theatre company reused costumes when possible and would rarely get new costumes made. Costumes themselves were expensive, so usually, players wore contemporary clothing regardless of the time period of the play. The most expensive pieces were given to higher class characters because costuming was used to identify social status on stage. The fabrics within a playhouse would indicate the wealth of the company itself. The fabrics used the most were: velvet, satin, silk, cloth-of-gold, lace, and ermine.

Comedies were common. A subgenre developed in this period was the city comedy, which deals satirically with life in London after the fashion of Roman New Comedy. Examples are Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday and Thomas Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Though marginalised, the older genres like pastoral (The Faithful Shepherdess, 1608), and even the morality play (Four Plays in One, ca. 1608–13) could exert influences. After about 1610, the new hybrid subgenre of the tragicomedy enjoyed an efflorescence, as did the masque throughout the reigns of the first two Stuart kings, James I and Charles I.

The re-opening of the theatres in 1660 after the Restoration of Charles II signalled a renaissance of English drama. With the restoration of the monarch in 1660 came the restoration of and the reopening of the theatre. English comedies written and performed in the Restoration period from 1660 to 1710 are collectively called Restoration comedy. Restoration comedy is notorious for its sexual explicitness, a quality encouraged by Charles II (1660–1685) personally and by the rakish aristocratic ethos of his Royal court. For the first time, women were allowed to act, putting an end to the practice of the boy-player taking the parts of women. Socially diverse audiences included both aristocrats, their servants and hangers-on, and a substantial middle-class segment. Its dramatists stole freely from English Jacobean and Caroline plays, and even from Greek and Roman classical comedies, combining the various plotlines in adventurous ways.

Restoration audiences liked to see good triumph in their tragedies and rightful government restored. In comedy, they liked to see the love-lives of the young and fashionable, with a central couple bringing their courtship to a successful conclusion (often overcoming the opposition of the elders to do so). Heroines had to be chaste, but were independent-minded and outspoken; now that they were played by women, there was more mileage for the playwright in disguising them in men’s clothes or giving them narrow escape from rape. These playgoers were attracted to the comedies by up-to-the-minute topical writing, by crowded and bustling plots, by the introduction of the first professional actresses, and by the rise of the first celebrity actors. This period saw the first professional woman playwright, Aphra Behn. In the mid-1690s, a brief second Restoration comedy renaissance arose, aimed at a wider audience.

The unsentimental or “hard” comedies of John Dryden, William Wycherley, and George Etherege reflected the atmosphere at Court and celebrated with frankness an aristocratic macho lifestyle of unremitting sexual intrigue and conquest. The Earl of Rochester, real-life Restoration rake, courtier and poet, is flatteringly portrayed in Etherege’s The Man of Mode (1676) as a riotous, witty, intellectual, and sexually irresistible aristocrat, a template for posterity’s idea of the glamorous Restoration rake (actually never a very common character in Restoration comedy). The single play that does most to support the charge of obscenity levelled then and now at Restoration comedy is probably Wycherley’s masterpiece The Country Wife (1675), whose title contains a lewd pun and whose notorious “china scene” is a series of sustained double entendres.

During the second wave of Restoration comedy in the 1690s, the “softer” comedies of William Congreve and John Vanbrugh set out to appeal to a more socially diverse audience with a strong middle-class element, as well as to female spectators. The comic focus shifts from young lovers outwitting the older generation to the vicissitudes of marital relations. In Congreve’s Love for Love (1695) and The Way of the World (1700), the give-and-take set pieces of couples testing their attraction for one another have mutated into witty prenuptial debates on the eve of marriage, as in the latter’s famous “Proviso” scene. Vanbrugh’s The Provoked Wife (1697) has a light touch and more humanly recognisable characters, while The Relapse (1696) has been admired for its throwaway wit and the characterisation of Lord Foppington, an extravagant and affected burlesque fop with a dark side.

As a reaction to the decadence of Charles II era productions, sentimental comedy grew in popularity. This genre focused on encouraging virtuous behaviour by showing middle-class characters overcoming a series of moral trials. Playwrights like Colley Cibber and Richard Steele believed that humans were inherently good but capable of being led astray. Through plays such as The Conscious Lovers and Love’s Last Shift they strove to appeal to an audience’s noble sentiments so that viewers could be reformed. The Restoration spectacular hit the London public stage in the late 17th-century Restoration period, enthralling audiences with action, music, dance, moveable scenery, baroque illusionistic painting, gorgeous costumes, and special effects such as trapdoor tricks, “flying” actors, and fireworks.

Today there are a variety of theatres in London’s West End. Andrew Lloyd Webber dominated the West End for many years; his musicals also conquered Broadway and were made into films. The prestigious Royal Shakespeare Company operates out of Shakespeare’s hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon and performs primarily, but not exclusively, his works. Important modern playwrights are Alan Ayckbourn, John Osborne, Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard and Arnold Wesker.

Read more about The Culture Of England here.

The above articles were taken from Wikipedia and are subject to change.

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Notes And Links

The English Democrats – The ONLY political party in this country that TRULY represent the needs and rights of ENGLAND and the ENGLISH.

English Pride Index

The English Language

The English People

Local History

I have lived in Birmingham all my life, which is part of the West Midlands, and the different areas I have lived in or visited define my own personal local history.

These subjects will be covered in my decades and West Midlands sections and. as such deserve any relevant blog posts. will appear there and here. As this section, you are on now is relevant to my life it deserves a place in the menu all to itself for everyone to clearly see.

About Local History

Local history is the study of history in a geographically local context and it often concentrates on the local community. It incorporates cultural and social aspects of history. Local history is not merely national history writ small but a study of past events in a given geographical but one that is based on a wide variety of documentary evidence and placed in a comparative context that is both regional and national. Historic plaques are one form of documentation of significant occurrences in the past and oral histories are another.

Local history is often documented by local historical societies or groups that form to preserve a local historic building or other historic sites. Many works of local history are compiled by amateur historians working independently or archivists employed by various organizations. An important aspect of local history is the publication and cataloguing of documents preserved in local or national records which relate to particular areas.

In a number of countries, a broader concept of local lore is known, which is a comprehensive study of everything pertaining to a certain locality: history, ethnography, geography, natural history, etc.

Blog Posts

Birmingham: The Old Crown In Digbeth.

Birmingham: The Old Crown In Digbeth Photos (Part 1).

Birmingham: The Old Crown In Digbeth Photos (Part 2).

The Birmingham Buddhist Vihara.

The Birmingham Buddhist Vihara Photos: Page 1.

The Birmingham Buddhist Vihara Photos: Page 2.

The Birmingham Buddhist Vihara Photos: Page 3.

Links

The Lewis Building Birmingham – The image shown at the top of this page is the copyright of The Lewis Building Birmingham. On their website, you can read about the history of the building and much more.

History

The history of our past has shaped our present-day and our present-day will shape our future, for better or worse.

On this page. via blog posts, you will see events and traditions that have brought us to the present day and they should NEVER be erased or changed to appease ANYONE because they don’t fit their narrative.

These events will be shown in my decades section and you will read about local history relevant to me there as well. Check them out and the blog posts that go with them.

Blog Posts

History: Bonfire Night.

Links

axonia on Pixabay – The image shown at the top of this page is the copyright of axonia. You can find more great work from the photographer and lots more free stock photo’s at Pixabay.

Birmingham City

There is only one team in Birmingham worth supporting with true passion and Birmingham City is it. I have been supporting them since 1979 when Jim Smith was the manager. I was 13 at the time. He is my favourite manager to date. I am a blue nose ’til I die.

Although I do have a section for Sport on my website, I could not justify sticking the Blues as a subcategory of it. They have been and are an important part of my life growing up to the present day and as such deserves pride of place on its own in my website menu, joys, sorrows and all!

Read about them, and any memories regarding them in associated blog posts and my decades section as well.

For Blues fixtures, results and goalscorers for the current season click here.

There is information including kits, squads etc. for the current season in the Blog Posts at the bottom of the page.

About Birmingham City F.C.

Birmingham City Football Club is a professional football club based in Birmingham, England. Formed in 1875 as Small Heath Alliance, it was renamed Small Heath in 1888, Birmingham in 1905, and Birmingham City in 1943. The club play in the E.F.L. League One (the third tier of English football) in the 2024–25 season, following relegation from the Championship last season. The club’s nickname is Blues, after the colour of their kit, and the fans are known as Blue Noses.

As Small Heath, Blues have played in the Football Alliance before becoming founder members and first champions of the Football League Second Division. The most successful period in our history was in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. We achieved our highest finishing position of sixth in the First Division in the 1955–56 season and reached the 1956 F.A. Cup Final. Blues played in two Inter-Cities Fairs Cup finals, in 1960, as the first English club side to reach a major European final, and again the following year. We won the League Cup in 1963 and again in 2011. Birmingham has played in the top tier of English football for around half of their history. The longest period spent outside the top division was between 1986 and 2002, which included two brief spells in the third tier of English football, during which time we won the Football League Trophy twice.

St Andrew’s, renamed St. Andrew’s @ Knighthead Park in 2024 for sponsorship reasons (although many fans will still refer to it as St. Andrew’s as I will), has been our home ground since 1906.

Blues have a long-standing and fierce rivalry with Aston Villa.

Birmingham City F.C. Anthem

Keep Right On is one of the most well-known anthems in football, famously sung by Birmingham City fans.

Where Does The Song Come From?

The song originally came from Scotland. The song was written and sung by Sir Henry Lauder, a singer and a comedian. Lauder was very popular during the early 1900’s and he achieved international success.

The song was written and composed in 1924 by Lauder and William Dillon. The song was then released in 1925.

The song was inspired by personal tragedy. Lauder wrote the song after his son was killed in action during the First World War.

What Are The Lyrics?

For Lauder’s original Keep Right On, the lyrics went like this:

“Every road through life is a long, long road.

Filled with joys and sorrows too.

As we journey on how your heart will yearn.

For the things most dear to you.

With wealth and love ‘tis so.

But onward we must go.

Keep right on to the end of the road.

Keep right on to the end.

Though the way be long, let your heart be strong.

Keep right on round the bend.

If you’re tired and weary still journey on.

Till you come to your happy abode.

Where all you love and you’re dreaming of.

Will be there at the end of the road.

Keep right on to the end of the road.

With a big stout heart to a long steep hill.

We may get there with a smile.

With a good kind thought and an end in view.

We can cut short many a mile.

So let courage every day.

Be your guiding star always.

Keep right on to the end of the road.

Keep right on to the end.

Though the way be long, let your heart be strong.

Keep right on round the bend.

If you’re tired and weary still journey on.

Till you come to your happy abode.

Where all you love and you’re dreaming of.

Will be there at the end of the road.

Keep right on to the end of the road.

Keep right on to the end.

Though the way be long, let your heart be strong.

Keep right on round the bend.

If you’re tired and weary still journey on.

Till you come to your happy abode.

Where all you love and you’re dreaming of.

Will be there at the end of the road.”

Keep Right On To The End Of The Road by Harry Lauder.

When Did Birmingham City Adopt It Into The Terraces?

Keep Right On arrived into the terraces of St Andrews in the mid-1950’s.

Blues were on our way to Leyton Orient in the fourth round of the F.A. Cup and manager Arthur Turner got the squad to sing the anthem as a pre-match ritual to calm the nerves before a big game.

Birmingham City legend Alex Govan, a winger who played for Blues during the 1950’s, introduced the team to Lauder’s famous song as the club went on to reach the FA Cup final in 1956.

Since then, the song has been adopted as the club’s anthem and the rest is history.

Govan once said to BBC WM: “We always had a sing-song on the coach wherever we went away from home… And Arthur Turner turned and said “Come on Alex, give us something from Scotland.””

“I couldn’t sing “I belong to Glasgow”, he continued, “so I sang “Keep right on to the end of the road”, it was the easiest one to sing… The fans heard us through the windows and it’s been magic ever since.”

As we all know, Keep Right On, has fans’ hairs standing up on the backs of their necks whenever it is belted around St Andrews. You have to be there to truly experience the magic of it all.

Two great examples of this anthem at its finest were before the Carling Cup final in 2011, and after Paul Caddis scored the equaliser against Bolton at the then-named Reebok Stadium, which saved Blues from relegation to League One on the final day of the season.

Birmingham City Legend Alex Govan.

What Are The Lyrics Of The Chant Sung By The Fans?

As you go through life it’s a long, long road.

There’ll be joys and sorrows too.

As we journey on we will sing this song.

For the boys in royal blue.

We’re often partisan.

We will journey on.

Keep right on to the end of the road.

Keep right on to the end.

Though the way be long.

Let your heart beat strong.

Keep right on to the end.

Though you’re tired and weary.

Still journey on.

Till you come to your happy abode.

Where all the love you’ve been dreaming of will be there.

Where?

At the end of the road.

Birmingham.

Birmingham City fans singing Keep Right On To The End Of The Road before The Carling Cup Final Kick-Off.

The History Of Birmingham City F.C.

The Early Years: 1875 – 1943

Birmingham City was founded as Small Heath Alliance in 1875, and from 1877 we played our home games at Muntz Street in Small Heath, Birmingham. The club turned professional in 1885 and three years later became the first football club to become a limited company with a board of directors, under the name of Small Heath F.C. Ltd. From the 1889 – 90 season Blues played in the Football Alliance, which ran alongside the Football League. In 1892, Small Heath, along with the other Alliance teams, was invited to join the newly formed Football League Second Division. We finished as champions, but failed to win promotion via the test match system. The following season promotion to the First Division was secured after a second-place finish and test match victory over Darwen. The club adopted the name Birmingham Football Club in 1905 and moved into their new home, St Andrew’s, the following year. Matters on the field failed to live up to their surroundings. Birmingham was relegated in 1908, obliged to apply for re-election two years later, and remained in the Second Division until after the First World War.

Frank Womack’s captaincy and the creativity of Scottish international playmaker Johnny Crosbie contributed much to Birmingham winning Blues a second Division Two title in 1920–21. Womack went on to make 515 appearances, a club record for an outfielder, over a twenty-year career. 1920 also saw the debut of the 19-year-old Joe Bradford, who went on to score a club record 267 goals in 445 games and won 12 caps for England. In 1931, manager Leslie Knighton led the club to their first FA Cup Final, which they lost 2–1 to Second Division club West Bromwich Albion. Though Birmingham remained in the top flight for 18 seasons, we struggled in the league, with much reliance placed on England goalkeeper Harry Hibbs to make up for the lack of goals, Bradford excepted, at the other end. Blues were finally relegated in 1939, the last full season before the Football League was abandoned for the duration of the Second World War.

Second Division Champions Small Heath F.C. in 1893.

Post-War Success: (1943 – 1965)

The name Birmingham City F.C. was adopted in 1943. Under Harry Storer, appointed manager in 1945, the club won the Football League South wartime league and reached the semifinal of the first post-war F.A. Cup. Two years later Blues won our third Second Division title, conceding only 24 goals in the 42-game season. Storer’s successor Bob Brocklebank, though unable to stave off relegation in 1950, brought in players who made a major contribution to the club’s successes of the next decade. When Arthur Turner took over as manager in November 1954, he made them play closer to their potential, and a 5 – 1 win on the last day of the 1954 – 55 season confirmed Birmingham City as champions. In our first season back in the First Division, Birmingham achieved our highest league finish of sixth place. We also reached the F.A. Cup final, losing 3 – 1 to Manchester City in the game notable for City’s goalkeeper Bert Trautmann playing the last 20 minutes with a broken bone in his neck. The following season the club lost in the F.A. Cup semi-final for the third time since the war, this time beaten 2 – 0 by Manchester United’s Busby Babes.

Birmingham became the first English club side to take part in European competition when they played their first group game in the inaugural Inter-Cities Fairs Cup competition on the 15th of May 1956. We went on to reach the semi-final where we drew 4 – 4 on aggregate with Barcelona, losing the replay 2 – 1. We were also the first English club side to reach a European final, losing 4 – 1 on aggregate to Barcelona in the 1960 Fairs Cup final and 4 -2 to A.S. Roma the following year. In the 1961 semi-final, Blues beat Internazionale home and away and no other English club won a competitive game in the San Siro until Arsenal managed it in 2003. Gil Merrick’s side saved their best form for cup competitions. Though opponents in the 1963 League Cup final, local rivals Aston Villa, were pre-match favourites, Birmingham raised their game and won 3 – 1 on aggregate to lift their first major trophy. In 1965, after ten years in the top flight, we returned to the Second Division.

Investment, Promotion And Decline: (1965 – 1993)

Businessman Clifford Coombs took over as chairman in 1965, luring Stan Cullis out of retirement to manage the club. Cullis’s team played attractive football which took Blues to the semi-finals of the League Cup in 1967 and of the F.A. Cup in 1968, but league football needed a different approach. Successor Freddie Goodwin produced a team playing skilful, aggressive football that won promotion as well as reaching an F.A. Cup semi-final. Two years later, the club raised money by selling Bob Latchford to Everton for a British record fee of £350,000, but without his goals, the team struggled. Sir Alf Ramsey briefly managed the club before Jim Smith took over in 1978 (the year I started supporting them). With relegation a certainty, the club sold Trevor Francis to Nottingham Forest, making him the first player transferred for a fee of £1 million. Francis had scored 133 goals in 329 appearances over his nine years at Blues.

Smith took Birmingham City straight back to the First Division, but a poor start to the 1981 – 82 season saw him replaced by Ron Saunders, who had just resigned from Aston Villa. Saunders’ team struggled to score goals and was relegated in 1984. Blues bounced back up the following season. Saunders quit after F.A. Cup defeat to non-League team Altrincham, staff were laid off, the training ground was sold, and by 1989 Birmingham was in the Third Division for the first time in their history.

In April 1989 the Kumar brothers, owners of a clothing chain, bought the club. A rapid turnover of managers, the absence of promised investment, and a threatened mass refusal of players to renew contracts were relieved only by a victorious trip to Wembley in the Associate Members’ Cup. Terry Cooper delivered promotion, but the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (B.C.C.I.) put the Kumars’ businesses into receivership. In November 1992 B.C..C.I.’s liquidator put up for sale their 84% holding in the football club.

Sale And Reconstruction: (1992 – 2007)

The club continued in administration for four months, until Sport Newspapers’ proprietor David Sullivan bought it for £700,000, installed the then 23-year-old Karren Brady as managing director and allowed Cooper money for signings. On the last day of the season, the team avoided relegation back to the third tier, but after a poor start to the 1993–94 season, manager Terry Cooper was replaced by Barry Fry. The change did not prevent relegation, but Fry’s first full season brought promotion back to the second tier as champions, and victory over Carlisle United in the Football League Trophy via Paul Tait’s golden goal completed the lower-league Double. After one more year, Fry was dismissed to make way for the return of Trevor Francis.

Reinforced by players with top-level experience, including Manchester United captain Steve Bruce, Francis’s team narrowly missed out on a play-off position in 1998, and three years of play-off semi-final defeats followed. Blues reached the 2001 League Cup final against Liverpool at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium. Birmingham equalised in the last minute of normal time, but the match went to a penalty shoot-out which Liverpool won. By October 2001, lack of progress had made Francis’s position untenable and after a 6–0 League Cup defeat to Manchester City, he left by mutual consent. Bruce’s return as manager shook up a stale team. He took them from mid-table to the play-offs and beat Norwich City on penalties in the final to secure promotion to the Premier League.

Motivated by the inspirational Christophe Dugarry, Birmingham’s first top-flight season for 16 years finished in mid-table. Loan signing Mikael Forssell’s 17 league goals helped Blues to a top-half finish in 2003 – 04, but when he was injured, the 2004 – 05 team struggled for goals. In July 2005, chairman David Gold said it was time to start talking about being as good as anyone outside the top three or four with the best squad of players for 25 years.

Injuries, loss of form, and lack of transfer window investment saw us get relegated in a season whose lowlight was a 7 – 0 F.A. Cup defeat to Liverpool. Jermaine Pennant and Emile Heskey left for record fees, and many others were released, but Bruce’s amended recruitment strategy, combining free-transfer experience with young hungry players and shrewd exploitation of the loan market, brought automatic promotion at the end of a season which had included calls for his head.

Manager Steve Bruce at a pre-season tournament at Weiden, Germany in 2004.

Bruce led Birmingham City to promotion to the Premier League in 2002 and 2007.

The Chinese Years (2007 – 2023)

In July 2007, Hong Kong-based businessman Carson Yeung bought 29.9% of shares in the club, making him the biggest single shareholder, with a view to taking full control in the future. Uncertain as to his future under possible new owners, Bruce left in mid-season. His successor, Scotland national team manager Alex McLeish, was unable to stave off relegation but achieved promotion back to the Premier League at the first attempt. Yeung’s company completed the takeover in 2009, and the team finished in ninth place, our highest in 51 years. In 2011, we combined a second League Cup, defeating favourites Arsenal 2 – 1 with goals from Nikola Zigic and Obafemi Martins and securing qualification for the Europa League, with relegation back to the second-tier, after which McLeish resigned to join Aston Villa.

Birmingham narrowly failed to reach the knockout rounds of the Europa League and the play-off final. With the club in financial turmoil and under a transfer embargo, manager Chris Hughton left. Under Lee Clark, Blues twice retained our divisional status, albeit through Paul Caddis’s 93rd-minute goal in the last match of 2013 – 14 to avoid relegation on goal difference, but continued poor form saw him dismissed in October 2014. Gary Rowett stabilised the team and led us to two tenth-place finishes before being controversially dismissed by new owners Trillion Trophy Asia in favour of the pedigree of Gianfranco Zola, who would aid the club’s strategic, long-term view to take the club in a new direction.

Two wins from 24 matches under Zola left Birmingham needing two wins from the last three games to stay up, which they achieved under the managership of Harry Redknapp. Redknapp lasted another month, his former assistant Steve Cotterill five months, leaving successor Garry Monk another (ultimately successful) relegation battle. Despite budgetary restrictions and a nine-point deduction for breaches of the League’s Profitability and Sustainability (P&S) rules, Blues finished 17th in 2018 – 19. However, Monk was sacked in June after conflict with the board. He was succeeded by his assistant, Pep Clotet, initially as caretaker. In the 2019 – 20 season, a season that was suspended from March to June 2020 due to COVID, the club once again avoided relegation despite a 14-match winless run at the end of the season and the threat of a further points deduction. Academy product Jude Bellingham was sold to Borussia Dortmund in the summer for a club-record deal reported to be worth up to £30 million, after which Aitor Karanka lasted eight months as head coach before being replaced by former Birmingham player Lee Bowyer. After 16 months and yet another relegation struggle, amid rumours of an imminent takeover, Bowyer was replaced by John Eustace.

America Control (2023 – Present)

After two takeover attempts fell through, Shelby Companies Ltd, a subsidiary of US-based Knighthead Capital Management and fronted by that company’s co-founder Tom Wagner, purchased a controlling stake in the club and full ownership of the stadium on the 13th of July 2023.

In early October, with the team in the play-off places, John Eustace was sacked as manager. In a move that echoed Gary Rowett’s replacement by Gianfranco Zola seven years prior, the board stressed the need for a winning mentality and a culture of ambition across the club and a new appointment with responsibility for creating an identity and clear no-fear playing style. After former England international player Wayne Rooney‘s two wins from 15 matches left Birmingham in 20th place, Tony Mowbray was appointed manager. His need for medical leave brought the interim appointment of Gary Rowett, whose 11 points from the last eight games was not enough to prevent relegation to League One after 29 years at a higher level. On the 6th of June, 2024, Blues announced that our new manager would be Chris Davies who was previously at Tottenham Hotspur as their assistant manager.

Click here to read more about the start of the New Era of Birmingham City in 2023.

Colours And Badge

The Small Heath Alliance members decided among themselves that their colours would be blue. In the early days, they wore whatever blue shirt they had. The first uniform kit was a dark blue shirt with a white sash and white shorts. Several variations on a blue theme were tried and the one that stuck was the royal blue shirt with a white V, adopted during the First World War and retained until the late 1920’s. Though the design changed, royal blue remained. In 1971 Blues adopted the penguin strip (royal blue with a broad white central front panel) which lasted five years. This is probably most Blues fans, of a certain age’s favourite kit (it certainly is mine). Since then we have generally worn plain, nominally royal blue tops, though the actual shade used has varied. Shorts have been either blue or white, and socks usually blue, white or a combination. White, yellow, red and black, on their own or in combination, have been the most frequently used colours for the away kit.

There were aberrations: the 1992 kit, sponsored by Triton Showers, was made of a blue material covered with multicoloured splashes. The home shirt has only once featured stripes. In 1999, the blue shirt had a front central panel in narrow blue and white stripes.

You can view all of Birmingham City’s football kits past and present here.

When the club changed its name from Small Heath to Birmingham in 1905 it adopted the city’s coat of arms as its badge, although this was not always worn on the Blues tops. The 1970’s penguin top carried the letters B.C.F.C. intertwined at the centre of the chest. The Sports Argus newspaper ran a competition in 1972 to design a new badge for the club. The winning entry, a line-drawn globe and ball, with a ribbon carrying the club’s name and date of foundation, in plain blue and white, was adopted by the club but not worn on playing shirts until 1976, after the design was granted by the College of Arms in 1975. The design recorded at the College did not include the ribbon and was blazoned as a football ensigned by a terrestrial globe proper. This was granted as a heraldic badge to the English Football League and was licensed to Birmingham City. An experiment was made in the early 1990’s with colouring in the globe and ball but was soon abandoned.

The first sponsor to have its name on the shirt was Birmingham-based brewery Ansells in 1983. They withdrew in mid-1985, and the shirts went unsponsored until January 1987, when Co-op Milk paid a five-figure sum to have its name displayed until the end of the season, which was a relief to the club not only financially; the vice-chairman claimed that as a “big club… people expect us to have a shirt sponsor and we have been lagging behind”. Later sponsors included car retailer P.J. Evans/Evans Halshaw (1988 – 1989), Mark One (1989 – 1992), Triton Showers (1992 – 1995), Auto Windscreens (1995 – 2001), Phones 4u (2001 – 2003), Flybe (2003 – 2007), F&C Investments (2007 – 2011), foreign exchange company RationalFX (2011 – 2012), lifestyle and leisure business EZE Group (2012 – 2013 and 2015 – 2016), e-cigarette company Nicolites (2013 – 2014), mobile payment enabler Zapaygo (2014 – 2015), 888sport (2016 – 2019) and Irish bookmaker BoyleSports (2019 – 2023). L.A. based sports brand Undefeated is the current sponsor (2023 – ) which is supplied by Nike.

Kits

Click here to see the current Birmingham City kits.

Small Heath Alliance’s first football kit from 1875.

Birmingham City’s club badge.

Stadiums

Small Heath Alliance played their first home games on waste ground off Arthur Street in Bordesley Green, Birmingham. As interest grew, we moved to a fenced-off field in Ladypool Road, Sparkbrook, where admission could be charged. A year later, we moved again, to a field adjoining Muntz Street, Small Heath, Birmingham, near the main Coventry Road, with a capacity of about 10,000. The Muntz Street ground was adequate for 1880’s friendly matches, and the capacity was gradually raised to around 30,000, but when several thousand spectators scaled walls and broke down turnstiles to get into a First Division match against Aston Villa, it became clear that it could no longer cope with the demand.

Director Harry Morris identified a site for a new ground in Small Heath, Bordesley Green, Birmingham, some three-quarters of a mile from Muntz Street towards the city centre. The site was where a brickworks once operated. The land sloped steeply down to stagnant pools, yet the stadium was constructed in under twelve months from land clearance to the opening ceremony on Boxing Day 1906. Heavy snow nearly prevented the opening; volunteers had to clear the pitch and terraces before the match, a goalless draw against Middlesbrough, could go ahead. The ground is reputed to have been cursed by gypsies evicted from the site; although gypsies are known to have camped nearby, there is no contemporary evidence for their eviction by the club.

The original capacity of St Andrew’s was reported as 75,000, with 4,000 seats in the Main Stand and space for 22,000 under cover. By 1938 the official capacity was 68,000, and February 1939 saw the attendance record set at the fifth round FA Cup tie against Everton, variously recorded as 66,844 or 67,341. On the outbreak of the Second World War, the Chief Constable ordered the ground’s closure because of the danger from air raids; it was the only ground to be thus closed and was only re-opened after the matter was raised in Parliament. It was badly damaged during the Birmingham Blitz: the Railway End and the Kop as a result of the bombing, while the Main Stand burnt down when a fireman mistook petrol for water.

The replacement Main Stand used a propped cantilever roof design, which meant fewer pillars to block spectators’ view of the pitch. Floodlights were installed in 1956 and officially switched on for a friendly match against Borussia Dortmund in 1957. By the early 1960’s a stand had been built at the Railway End to the same design as the Main Stand, roofs had been put on the Kop and Tilton Road End, and the ground capacity was down to about 55,000.

Resulting from the 1986 Popplewell Report into the safety of sports grounds and the later Taylor Report, the capacity of St Andrew’s was set at 28,235 for safety reasons, but it was accepted that the stadium had to be brought up to modern all-seated standards. After the last home game of the 1993 – 94 season, the Kop and Tilton Road terraces were demolished (fans took home a significant proportion as souvenirs) to be replaced at the start of the new season by a 7,000-seat Tilton Road Stand, continuing round the corner into the 9,500-seat Kop which opened two months later. The 8,000-seat Railway Stand followed in 1999; ten years later, this was renamed the Gil Merrick Stand, in honour of the club’s appearance record-holder and former manager, but the Main Stand has still to be modernised. In 2019, the club website listed the stadium capacity as 29,409.

In 2004 a proposal was put forward to build a sports village comprising a 55,000-capacity City of Birmingham Stadium, other sports and leisure facilities, and a super casino, to be jointly financed by Birmingham City Council, Birmingham City F.C. (via the proceeds of the sale of St Andrew’s) and the casino group Las Vegas Sands. The feasibility of the plan depended on the government issuing a licence for a super casino, and Birmingham being chosen as the venue, but this did not happen. The club have planning permission to redevelop the Main Stand, but the club and council continued to seek alternative sources of funding for the City of Birmingham Stadium project.

In 2013, the Birmingham City Supporters’ Trust’s application for listing St Andrew’s as an Asset of Community Value (ACV, a building or other land whose main use furthers the social well-being or social interests of the local community and where it is realistic to believe it could do so in the future) under the Localism Act 2011 was approved by Birmingham City Council. This requires any proposed sale to be notified to the Council and provides for a six-month moratorium on that sale to allow the Trust and other community groups to submit their own bid. In 2018, the club’s owners agreed to a three-year sponsorship deal under which the name became St Andrew’s Trillion Trophy Stadium. This would be changed back to St. Andrews in 2021. In 2024 Blues made an announcement that they had entered into a multi-million pound, multi-year naming rights agreement with Shelby Companies Limited, which is majority-owned by Knighthead and certain other minority investors, including seven-time Super Bowl champion and entrepreneur, Tom Brady. It is the largest commercial agreement in the Club’s history. Under the terms of the deal, the Club’s stadium was re-named St. Andrew’s @ Knighthead Park. The Club’s Wast Hills training ground was renamed The Knighthead Training and Academy Grounds and a new fan entertainment zone @ Knighthead Park, will be built, situated on Club-owned land close to the Tilton and Main Stand at the Stadium. These will be launched before the end of the 2023/24 Season.

On the 9th of April, 2024, Blues announced Knighthead’s acquisition of the 48-acre former Wheels site in Bordesley Park, East Birmingham, bringing their total land holding to more than 60 acres, excluding St. Andrew’s @ Knighthead Park. This is a key step toward creating a vibrant Sports Quarter and a new world-class stadium.

A New Look St. Andrew’s

In the first four weeks of owning Birmingham City, which included 100% of St. Andrew’s, Tom Wagner, Knighthead and Shelby Companies made it clear they were going to improve everything to do with Blues, on and off the pitch going forward. They did more for morale for Blues in the first four weeks since they took over than the previous Chinese owners ever did in sixteen years.

The stadium got a much-needed new look in that time that included a giant badge that lights up along with the new lettering and two large screens on either side of it. and what a fantastic improvement it turned out to be.

The following photos were taken before Blues first home game of the 2023/24 season against Leeds United.

Inside the new look St. Andrews showing the improved giant screen.

Inside the new look St. Andrews.

Outside the new look St. Andrews showing the new giant badge and lettering.

Inside the new look St. Andrews.

Inside the new look St. Andrews showing the improved dug-out seats.

Inside the new look St. Andrews showing the improved player’s tunnel.

Inside the new look St. Andrews showing the improved player’s changing room.

Buckingham Group

Despite all the brilliant work that has been done above, the contractor, Buckingham Group, responsible for working on the lower tiers of the Tilton and Kop stands (which include safe standing) had gone into administration. It was announced by Blues on the 17th of August, 2023. You can read about it here.

Supporters

Birmingham fans consider our main rivals to be Aston Villa, our nearest neighbours geographically, with whom we contest the Second City derby. Lesser rivalries include fellow West Midlands clubs Wolverhampton Wanderers and West Bromwich Albion.

Blues supporters are generally referred to as Blue Noses in the media and by the fans themselves. A piece of public sculpture in the form of a ten-times-life-size head lying on a mound near St Andrew’s, Ondré Nowakowski’s Sleeping Iron Giant, has been repeatedly painted with blue paint on its nose. Between 1994 and 1997, the club mascot took the form of a blue nose, though it is now a dog named Beau Brummie (which had first appeared on our football programmes back in the 1960’s) , a play on the name Beau Brummell and Brummie, the slang word for a person from Birmingham.

A number of supporters’ clubs are affiliated with the football club, both in England and abroad. An action group was formed in 1991 to protest against chairman Samesh Kumar, the club blamed an internet petition for the collapse of the purchase of player Lee Bowyer in 2005, and antipathy towards the board provoked hostile chanting and a pitch invasion after the last match of the 2007 – 2008 season, but when the club was in financial difficulties, supporters contributed to schemes which funded the purchase of players Brian Roberts in 1984 and Paul Peschisolido in 1992. A supporters’ trust was formed under the auspices of Supporters Direct in 2012.

There have been several fanzines published by supporters. Made in Brum, first issued in 2000, was the only one regularly on sale in 2013. The Zulu began some years earlier and ran for at least 16 seasons.

Our fans’ anthem is Keep Right On (as mentioned above).

Birmingham City’s mascot Beau Brummie.

Birmingham City fans during the club’s first away appearance in the group stage of the UEFA Europa League in 2011.

Ownership

Small Heath F.C. became a limited company in 1888. Its first share issue was to the value of £650. The board was made up of local businessmen and dignitaries until 1965, when the club was sold to Clifford Coombs. By the mid-1980’s the club was in financial trouble. Control passed from the Coombs family to former Walsall F.C. chairman Ken Wheldon, who cut costs, made redundancies, and sold off assets, including the club’s training ground. Still unable to make the club pay, Wheldon sold it to the Kumar brothers, owners of a clothing chain. Debt was still increasing when matters came to a head; the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) put the Kumars’ businesses into receivership. The club continued in administration for four months until Sport Newspapers’ proprietor David Sullivan bought the Kumars’ 84% holding for £700,000 from BCCI’s liquidator in March 1993. Birmingham City plc, of which the football club was a wholly owned subsidiary, was floated on the Alternative Investment Market (A.I.M.) in 1997 with an issue of 15 million new shares, raising £7.5 million of new investment. It made a pre-tax profit of £4.3M in the year ending on the 31st of August 2008.

In July 2007, Hong Kong businessman Carson Yeung, via the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (S.E.H.K.)-listed company Grandtop International Holdings Limited (G.I.H.), bought 29.9% of the plc from its directors. Although his intention to take full control of the club initially came to nothing, G.I.H. completed the purchase in October 2009 at a total cost of £81.5M, re-registered the club as a private company, and renamed the holding company Birmingham International Holdings (B.I.H.).

Trading in B.I.H. shares was suspended in June 2011 after Yeung’s arrest on charges of money laundering. Publication of financial results was repeatedly delayed, which led the Football League to impose a transfer embargo, and offers for the club were entertained from 2012 onwards. After Yeung resigned his positions with both club and company in early 2014, share trading resumed, and following his conviction, efforts intensified to dispose of the club, which had to be done piecemeal in order to retain B.I.H.’s share listing.

Going into 2015, the Football League made public their concerns over Yeung’s attempts to impose his choice of directors on the B.I.H.L. board despite his conviction disqualifying him from exerting influence over a club. Relationships became increasingly factional, as illustrated by the failure of three directors, including the club’s de facto chief executive Panos Pavlakis, to gain re-election, followed the next day by their reinstatement. On the 17th of February, 2015, the board voluntarily appointed receivers from accountants Ernst & Young to take over management of the company. Their statement stressed that no winding-up petition had been issued and the company was not in liquidation.

In June 2015, the receivers struck deals with the previous major shareholders such that legal action against them would be dropped in return for their agreement not to obstruct any transfer of ownership to their preferred bidder, the British Virgin Islands-registered investment vehicle Trillion Trophy Asia (T.T.A.), wholly owned by Chinese businessman Paul Suen Cho Hung, who in turn agreed that the company would not be sold on within two years. The process was completed in October 2016, leaving T.T.A. owning 50.64% of BIH’s share capital, a level of ownership that required them to make an offer for the remainder.

To keep the company running, T.T.A. arranged loans which it settled with discounted shares to the same value; the process of creating such shares diluted the percentage holding of all shareholders. Attempts to diversify the company’s holdings to make it less reliant on the football club were similarly funded. To reduce the club’s losses in light of breaches of the EFL’s Profitability and Sustainability Regulations, the stadium was sold for £22.8 million to Birmingham City Stadium Ltd, a new company wholly owned by the football club’s parent, and would be leased back to the club. In December 2020, 21.64% of the club and 25% of Birmingham City Stadium were sold to Vong Pech’s Oriental Rainbow, and in April 2021, the remaining 75% of the stadium was sold.

A June 2022 attempt to purchase the club by a group fronted by former Watford F.C. owner Laurence Bassini, involving financier Keith Harris and money loaned by David Sullivan, came to nothing. A consortium led by fashion industry businessman Paul Richardson and Argentine former footballer Maxi López announced in July that they were close to completing the purchase of a stake in the club, and later confirmed that they were providing operating funds, but pulled out in December citing a failure to agree revisions to the original terms of agreement. In April 2023, Richardson, López and their proposed chief executive, former Charlton Athletic chairman Matt Southall, were sanctioned by the EFL after admitting to breaching regulations by taking effective control of the club without approval.

In April 2023, Birmingham Sports Holdings confirmed letters of intent had been signed to sell 24% of Birmingham City plc shares held by themselves and the 21.64% owned by Oriental Rainbow, as well as the whole of Birmingham City Stadium Ltd, to a then-unnamed potential purchaser, definitive agreements to be reached within a two-month exclusivity period. The purchaser was named Shelby Companies Ltd, a subsidiary of asset management company Knighthead Capital Management fronted by Tom Wagner, Knighthead’s co-founder and co-C.E.O. The agreements were subject to approval by the English Football League (E.F.L.), which was forthcoming in early June, and by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (H.K.S.E.), and an extraordinary general meeting (E.G.M.) on the 13th of July, 2023, voted overwhelmingly to accept. Although B.S.H. retains 51% of the shares, Wagner confirmed that Shelby was responsible for the operations of the club moving forward and that nothing about the way the transaction is structured would prevent them from obtaining the long-term goals they have for the club.

On the 14th of July, 2023, Wagner installed Garry Cook as C.E.O. of the club. A lifelong Birmingham City fan, Cook said, “The landscape of Birmingham is continuing to positively change. It’s young, multicultural and dynamic. It is time for the football club that bears its name, and shares its values, to add to this exciting story. With the support of Tom and the Knighthead team, and in partnership with the city of Birmingham, we aim to be world-class in everything that we do.”

On the 3rd of August, 2023, it was announced that N.F.L. legend Tom Brady would become a minority owner and chairman of a new advisory board at the club, in partnership with Knighthead Capital Management L.L.C.

Honours

Birmingham City’s honours include the following:

Second Division / First Division / The Championship (level 2):

Champions:

1892 – 1993, 1920 – 1921, 1947 – 1948, 1954 – 1955.

Runners-up:

1893 – 1994, 1900 – 1901, 1902 – 1903, 1971 – 1972, 1984 – 1985, 2006 – 2007, 2008 – 2009.

Play-off winners:

2001 – 2002.

Third Division / Second Division (level 3):

Champions:

1994 – 1995.

Runners-up:

1991 – 1992.

F.A. Cup:

Runners-up:

1930 – 1931, 1955 – 56.

Football League Cup:

Winners:

1962 – 1963, 2010 – 11.

Runners-up:

2000 – 2001.

Inter-Cities Fairs Cup:

Runners-up:

1958 – 1960, 1960 – 1961.

Associate Members’ Cup / Football League Trophy:

Winners:

1990 – 91, 1994 – 95.

Birmingham Senior Cup:

Winners:

1905.

Small Heath first entered the Birmingham Senior Cup in 1878 – 79 (ten years before the foundation of the Football League) and won for the first time in 1905, defeating West Bromwich Albion 7 – 2 in the final. Its importance declined with the increase in League fixtures, and from 1905 – 1906 onwards, Birmingham fielded teams containing reserve-team players.

Football League South (wartime):

Champions:

1945 – 1946.

Preparatory to the Football League resuming in 1946 – 1947, the First and Second Division clubs from the last pre-war season were divided geographically between the Leagues North and South for 1945 – 46. Going into the last day of the season, Aston Villa were top of League South but had finished their programme two points (one win) ahead of the chasers but with a worse goal average. Charlton Athletic was second, above Birmingham by 0.002 of a goal. While Charlton could only draw at home to Wolverhampton Wanderers, Birmingham won away at Luton Town, so claimed the title by 0.3 of a goal.

Birmingham City’s trophy cabinet showing the Carling Cup.

Records And Statistics

Read more about Records And Statistics here.

Blues achieved our highest finishing position, of sixth in the top flight, in the 1955 – 1956 First Division. Frank Womack holds the record for Birmingham league appearances, having played 491 matches between 1908 and 1928, closely followed by Gil Merrick with 485 between 1946 and 1959. If all senior competitions are included, Merrick has 551, less closely followed by Womack’s 515 which is the record for an outfield player. The player who won the most international caps while at the club is Maik Taylor with 58 for Northern Ireland.

The goalscoring record is held by Joe Bradford, with 249 league goals, 267 altogether, scored between 1920 and 1935; no other player comes close. Walter Abbott holds the records for the most goals scored in a season, in 1898 – 99, with 34 league goals in the Second Division and 42 goals in total.

The club’s widest victory margin in the league was 12 – 0, a scoreline which they achieved once in the Football Alliance, against Nottingham Forest in 1899, and twice in the Second Division, against Walsall Town Swifts in 1892 and Doncaster Rovers in 1903. They have lost a league match by an eight-goal margin on eight occasions: twice in the Football Alliance and five times in the First Division, all away from home, and once at home, beaten 8 – 0 by A.F.C. Bournemouth in the Championship in 2014. Our record F.A. Cup win was 10 – 0 against Druids in the fourth qualifying round of the 1899 competition; their record F.A. Cup defeat was 7 – 0 at home to Liverpool in the 2006 quarter-final.

Birmingham’s home attendance record was set at the fifth-round F.A. Cup tie against Everton on the 11th of February, 1939. It is variously recorded as 66,844 or 67,341. The highest transfer fee received for a Birmingham player is, according to the Sky Sports website, a guaranteed £25 million up front received in July 2020 from Borussia Dortmund for Jude Bellingham, which made him the most expensive 17-year-old in world football. The deal also included add-ons worth several millions more. The highest fee paid is £6.3m for Croatian midfielder Ivan Šunjić, who joined from Dinamo Zagreb in July 2019.

Retired Numbers

In appreciation of Jude Bellingham’s contribution in a short time with the first team. Bellingham was the club’s youngest debutant, at 16 years and 38 days, and the youngest goalscorer, he completed a full season before becoming Birmingham’s record transfer and the world’s most expensive 17-year-old, showing what can be achieved through talent, hard work and dedication while retaining a caring, humble and engaging off-the-field demeanour. The club retired his number 22 shirt to remember one of their own and to inspire others.

Managers And Coaches

Click here to see the current manager of Birmingham City.

You can read about Birmingham City’s managers and coaches past and present in-depth by clicking here.

Players And Staff

Players

You can read about Birmingham City players’ past and present in-depth by clicking here.

First Team Squad

Click here to see the current first team of Birmingham City and their squad numbers

Staff

Click here to see the current staff of Birmingham City.

Reserves And Academy

For full information on Birmingham City’s Reserves and Academy players click here.

Birmingham City Women

For full information on Birmingham City’s Women’s team click here.

Birmingham City Ladies mascot Belle Brummie.

Club Officials

Owners

As of the current date.

Birmingham Sports Holdings Ltd – 51.7%

Shelby Companies Ltd – 45.96%

Board

As of the current date.

Chairman:

Tom Wagner.

C.E.O:

Garry Cook.

Directors:

Matthew Alvarez.

Andrew Shannahan.

Kyle Kneisly.

Wenqing Zhao.

Gannan Zheng.

Chairman Of The Advisory Board: Tom Brady.

Directors: Matthew Alvarez, Andrew Shannahan, Kyle Kneisly, Laura Torrado, Wenqing Zhao and Gannan Zheng.

Read more from the Birmingham City page on Wikipedia here.

Blog Posts

Birmingham City: Blues History.

Birmingham City: First Team Squad For The 2024/25 Season.

Birmingham City: Fixtures, Results And Goal Scorers For The 2024/25 Season.

Birmingham City: January Transfers For The 2024/25 Season.

Birmingham City: Kits For The 2024/25 Season.

Birmingham City: News For The 2024/25 Season.

Birmingham City: Our 2023/24 Season In Review.

Birmingham City: Summer Transfers For The 2024/25 Season.

Birmingham City: Staff For The 2024/25 Season.

Birmingham City: The 2023/24 Season Archive.

Birmingham City: Trevor Francis.

Birmingham City: Videos For The 2024/25 Season.

Birmingham City: Welcome To New Manager Chris Davies.

Notes And Links

The above information was sourced from the Birmingham City Wikipedia page except for “Birmingham City F.C. Anthem” which was sourced from the Birmingham Mail’s Birmingham City page.

Wikipedia content is subject to change.

The Birmingham City club logo shown at the top of this page is the copyright of Birmingham City F.C. and came from their social media pages.

The Home Kit photos are copyright of Birmingham City F.C. and came from their official website.

The Small Heath F.C. champions team photo from 1893 above is copyright unknown and came from Wikipedia.

The Steve Bruce photo from 2004 above is in the public domain and came from Wikipedia. It is copyright of Wikipedia user Struway.

The photo above of Beau Brummie is copyright of B.C.F.C and came from the Blues Store Online.

The photo above of Belle Brummie is copyright of B.C.F.C and came from the Blues Store.

The Small Heath F.C. original 1875 kit image from above is copyright of Historical Football Kits Birmingham City page.

The photo above of St. Andrews is copyright of photographer Slobozhansky and came from Wikimapia.

The photo above of St. Andrews in 2005 is copyright of photographer Struway and came from Wikipedia.

The photo above of Birmingham City away fans in 2011 is copyright of photographer Ratipok and came from Wikipedia.

The photo above of Birmingham City’s trophy cabinet is copyright of photographer Lokomotive74 and came from Wikipedia. You can view more of his or her great work here.

Birmingham City F.C. – Official website.

Birmingham City on Facebook – This is their official Facebook page.

Birmingham City on Twitter – This is their official Twitter page.

Birmingham City on YouTube – This is their official YouTube page.

Blues Store Online – Birmingham City’s official club store online.

List of Birmingham City F.C. seasons – List of seasons, including league division and statistics, cup results, top scorer and average league attendance from 1878 to the present day.

Birmingham Mail – Official website. The Birmingham Mail is a newspaper based in Birmingham, England but distributed around Birmingham, the Black Country, Solihull and parts of Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire.

Historical Football Kits – Official website. They have a very detailed and comprehensive graphic archive of football kits available including every team from the English and Scottish Leagues.

Wikipedia – Official website. Its purpose is to benefit readers by acting as a widely accessible and free encyclopedia that contains information on all branches of knowledge. Funded and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia consists of freely editable content whose articles also provide numerous links to guide readers to related pages with more information.

Wikimapia – Official website. Wikimapia is a multilingual open-content collaborative map, where anyone can create place tags and share their knowledge. Their goal is to describe the whole world by compiling as much useful information about all geographical objects as possible, organising it, and providing free access to their data for the public domain.