Creative Outlooks - Birmingham's Back to Backs - Sheer Nostalgic Bliss
Feb, 21 2025
For this month’s focus on Creative Outlooks it centres around the Birmingham Back to Backs (also known as Court 15) the city’s last surviving court of back to back houses. They are preserved as examples of thousands of similar houses that were built around shared courtyards, for the rapidly increasing population of Britain’s expanding industrial towns.
By the early last century, the ground floors had been converted into shops. Services offered from the buildings were:-
- A cycle maker
- A hairdresser
- A ticket writer
- A fruiterer
- A furniture dealer.
The upper floors of No. 55 and No. 59 Hurst Street, the cycle maker's and the ticket writer's properties respectively, were converted into workshops as opposed to residential.
George Sanders, an immigrant from St.Kitts, took over one of the shops to form his own tailor shop. When visitors explore the area, the front placard displays his name, his tailor shop (now beautifully restored) occupies the front part of the property, also highlighting the legacy of the windrush generation.
When you go down to the counter area of the shop, a recording of George’s voice plays, detailing his life story within Birmingham and the importance of these houses.
You can hear George sharing his memories on an audio recording found on the virtual tour of the back to backs in an interesting insight of the many lives that successfully capitalized on this unique period in history –
With sheer skill, a competent mindset and a clear initiative, people like George had great resilience following the aftermath of the second world war. They didn’t cower in sorrow or expect pity. They picked themselves up and found a way forward, a way in which occupants of the back to backs in Birmingham stuck together through thick and thin.
^Alex Ashworth CCG Art Blogger
