A narrow little road in Birmingham town centre that is a useful shortcut from Grand Central Station to the Cathedral area. It’s hard to believe that there were once 40 houses in the street and a population of 190.
I recently found this piece on a local forum - “In 1829 a local paper reported that the alley needed to go! The Birmingham Journal dubbed it “needless by name and needless by nature”. Indeed in the Georgian and early Victoria eras Needless Alley was a “disorderly street”, full of “disorderly houses”. In the summer of 1829 six individuals appeared before the magistrates accused of keeping “disorderly houses”, whilst a woman that also stood in the dock was described as “a nymph, resident in Needless Alley”.”
@g3xbm Ah yes. There’s a train of thought that in the early days of the city’s industrial history there may have been needle-making workshops in the street, so it probably started out as Needles Alley.
Such a narrow but today a tidy alley - I can just imagine it full of the hovels of the 1800 , Love your narrative - the past history so interesting and the possibility of being once called Needles Alley !
