When the West Midlands Metro launched in 1999 it ran from Wolverhampton to Snow Hill station on the edge of Birmingham city centre. Since then it's been incrementally extended at its southern end - in December 2015 to Bull Street, in May 2016 to Grand Central (alongside New Street station) and in December 2019 to Library (in Centenary Square). The most recent extension was in July last year - an additional three stops out to Edgbaston Village - so I thought I'd give that a ride. It's less than a mile in length but the character of the cityscape changes dramatically from the previous terminus to the new. [12 photos]
Library
That's the new golden library in Centenary Square, not the brutalist concrete library in Chamberlain Square which has now been demolished and comprehensively redeveloped. If you catch the tram from the previous stop, Town Hall, you can see where it used to squat, now replaced by office blocks, chain dining and a sweeping piazza. The tram skips all this and weaves from the Victorian civic centre into something much more modern, as the very name Centenary Square correctly suggests. It dates back to the late 1980s when the International Conference Centre and Symphony Hall were built, a concrete and glass combo that blockade the western end of the square. Centenary Square is a vast open space, occasionally filled by Christmas markets, festivals or angry demonstrations, but mostly the tramstop sits isolated in the middle.
The surrounding buildings include corporate towers, civic throwbacks and a gap where mixed-use development is planned to erupt. The A38 burrows unseen to the east. One chief anchor is Birmingham Rep, home to a popular and innovative theatre company (whose latest production is Spitting Image 'live on stage'). Recently returned to the square following the tram upgrade is the gilded bronze statue of Boulton, Watt and Murdoch, a reminder that Birmingham cut its teeth on worldbeating industrial innovation. They're consulting plans for a steam engine, not selling a roll of carpet as a popular nickname has it. Someone round here must really like gold because that's also the colour that screams out when you look at the new library, the nine storey bookstack that's turned learning into Birmingham's top tourist attraction. Arguably the city overreached because they now have to close it at 5pm most days to save money, but that's open plan design for you.
I blogged about the Library of Birmingham ten years ago when it opened but I couldn't resist another explore because the ascent to the summit is quite an adventure. First head up three sets of electric blue escalators into the dark heart of the beast, then past the broken glass elevator through the city archives, then up an unbroken flight of 90 stairs. At the 7th floor landing you can visit The Secret Garden, a clearly-signed roof terrace with dazzling views of an undazzling skyline. Then two further flights weave you up to a small viewing gallery and finally, within the gold rotunda, to the civic jewel that is the Shakespeare Memorial Room. This woodpanelled Victorian depository has now been located in three different buildings and is itself a replacement for a previous library that burned. Should you be less adventurous, or less mobile, you can also reach the top by lift.
Brindleyplace
Let's head canalside. This major 1990s development straddles a key canal junction and is named after James Brindley the pioneering waterway engineer. It features several office blocks with generic names like Three Brindleyplace and a variety of public spaces designed to get you to linger, perhaps with a coffee from the Costa rotunda. Stick to the towpaths and the place has real character, plus a variety of refreshment opportunities more geared to warmer months. The National Sea Life Centre has the corner plot overlooking the water, should you fancy encountering sharks, sea turtles and excitable children, while the backalleys contain fewer chain restaurants and more financial types.
The chief cultural draw is the Ikon Gallery, which is housed inside a neo-Gothic pile the developers sensibly kept. The art is spread across two floors above the obligatory cafe and shop, with all the access cunningly bolted onto the exterior. Sure the stairs are cute but the optimum route to the top is via the lift, not least because it includes one of Martin Creed's ascendant choral works. Press, listen, smile. The Ikon's current exhibition is called Horror in the Modernist Block, a somewhat sparse collection of works reflecting modern architecture, where I was politely told not to stand under the trapdoor because the carpet was part of the art. I didn't stay long.
The tram arrives at Brindleyplace by crossing Broad Street Bridge, or as it's been known since 2019 Black Sabbath Bridge. This unlikely renaming commemorates the locally-sourced heavy metal band, who did indeed turn up for the opening and sat obligingly on the Black Sabbath Bench where their cutouts now rest. I decided against sitting in the seat marked Geezer and using the QR code on the bench to trigger a selfie, but the less paranoid are welcome to give that a try. Birmingham isn't shy of embracing its mainstream cultural heroes, hence the Walk of Stars along Broad Street includes plaques for Noddy Holder, Ian Lavender, Toyah Willcox and Chris Tarrant, plus I even spotted a tram named after Ozzy Osbourne.
Five Ways
If you're a tourist and you get this far up Broad Street you've gone too far, unless that is it's where they shoved your boxy hotel. The tram has now nudged out into evening entertainment territory, hence the appearance of a casino, IMAX cinema, axe-throwing venue and a nightclub called Pryzm. I imagine it gets quite messy on a Saturday but midweek it's fairly dead. In nominatively exciting news, yes there is a Five Guys at Five Ways. Once upon a time five ordinary streets met here at a toll gate on the very edge of town. Today it's a mammoth roundabout on Birmingham's Middleway ring road and not especially close to the tramstop of the same name, just like it's not especially close to Five Ways station.
Only one of the surrounding wedges is prewar, the other four house chunky highrises in characteristically unsexy Brummy style. Pedestrians are funnelled down broad subways into the heart of the roundabout where planners have attempted to lighten the mood with benches, beds of pansies and a sculpture of splayed stainless steel pipes erected by Tube Investments Limited. A couple of central stalls dispense meaty halal snacks at prices that would make streetfood buyers in London jealous. Meanwhile the tramlines duck invisibly underneath, which didn't help my sense of direction when trying to work out which exit to take, a decision further challenged by none of the wayfinding maps yet including the extension.
Edgbaston Village
First things first, Edgbaston Village is not a village, it's a premier mixed-use retail andleisure hub rapidly establishing itself as a vibrant lifestyle destination, because even Birmingham has those now. It's invisible from the tramstop so they've had to erect upbeat signage directing you on a minor hike through a wall of Flexible Grade A Office Space. Neither the village nor the tramstop are anywhere near Edgbaston's chief attractions, the University and the cricket ground, although the Botanical Gardens are only a ten minute walk and Spearmint Rhino's barely two.
Instead trams draw to a halt on a stripe of grass beside the busy Hagley Road, prevented from continuing further by a small red Stop sign (and the fact the tracks run out). The most striking nearby office block is Tricorn House, which with its three concave concrete flanks creates a monolithic presence only Birmingham's planners would have risked. Behind it lies yet another nighttime destination, the reliably generic Broadway Plaza, where bowling, gambling, cinemagoing and chain restaurants collide. I think mainly what I'm saying is don't bother coming out this far, unless perhaps you're a fan of Lord of the Rings.
Among the few remaining prewar buildings at this end of Hagley Road is the Plough and Harrow hotel, originally a coaching inn, whose claim to fame is that JRR Tolkien stayed here in 1916. It turns out it was only for a night as a belated honeymoon before joining a troop transport to the French trenches, but that's been deemed sufficient for a blue plaque by the door. JRR spent four years living in this corner of Edgbaston, in various plaqued buildings, before gaining a place at Oxford and never coming back. The view from outside the hotel notably contains two towers of a gothic bent which may perhaps have been inspirational, as you can discover if you follow the Birmingham Tolkien Trail (previously blogged).
Trams depart Edgbaston Village every ten minutes heading for Wolverhampton, or W'ton St Georges as the garbled destination on the front of some trams has it. Alternatively you could catch the express X8 bus from the stop immediately alongside, although that only runs every twenty minutes and takes much longer to get there - 1hr 20 best case scenario whereas the tram takes 55 minutes. If you have more time a sign at the canal junction by Brindleyplace notes that Wolverhampton is just 13 miles away by narrowboat, but that's via several locks so yes perhaps best take the extended tram.
