Charlotte Street History

The 1778 Map of Birmingham (left) shows the layout of the roads around St Pauls Church devoid of any other buildings. The Birmingham and Fazeley Canal is also missing (it was opened the following year) although there is a single line on the map showing its course between Charlotte Street and Fleet Street. Charlotte Street ends abruptly in an open area, part of which seems to be divided into small plots.

Although the road plan for Charlotte Street is shown on an 1817 map of Birmingham (as shown on the detail from the map on the left) there are no buildings shown for most of its length, nor is it named. It could be that the land was set out for buildings but the construction had not been started in 1817 or it could be that this was one of the areas that were used in Birmingham at this time as gardens or that it was used for some similar purpose such as keeping horses or livestock.

The detail from the 1834 map (shown on the left) shows that Charlotte Street and the neighbourhood around it had gone from open land to a built up area in the intervening seventeen years. This reflects the growth of Birmingham generally that had gone from a town of 5,472 people in 1743 to 232,638 people in 1851. Between 1811 and 1841 alone there was an increase of 17,169 in the population.