Centre for Midlands History and Cultures

Forecasting the Future: Financing the Elan Valley Water Scheme, 1893-1955 Dr Justine Pick Online via Zoom [apologies unforeseen circumstances prevent hybrid format]. Thursday 15 May 2025   7:00-8:00pm In 1904 the first phase of the Elan Valley Water Scheme was completed at a cost of just under £6 million. Birmingham’s new water supply was delivered via … Continue reading “CMHC May Online Seminar”

Housing, Homes and Households in the Midlands   *IMPORTANT NOTICE* The Centre is disappointed to announce that due to unforeseen circumstances the annual conference has had to be postponed until 2026. Sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused. If you have already submitted an abstract then someone from the Centre will be in touch when the … Continue reading “Now Cancelled: Call for Papers for the Centre for Midlands History and Cultures Annual Conference”

The History of Parliament: Resources for Researchers Thursday 3 April 2025      7.00pm – 8.30pm  Online via Zoom     The director of the History of Parliament, Dr Jennifer Davey, will be joined by colleagues from the History’s various projects to explain what their research can offer to those interested in the history of … Continue reading “CMHC April Seminar [Online]”

Thursday 13 March         7:00 – 8:30pm Chamberlain’s Shadow; the campus, the clock tower and the colonial secretary. Sheldon K. Goodman The tallest freestanding clock tower in the world stands proudly at the heart of the University of Birmingham campus. But who was the man it was built to commemorate, and what can we make of … Continue reading “CMHC March Seminar [Online]”

Thursday 20 February  7:00 – 8:30pm [Online] ‘Variety and Choice: Birmingham Buttons and New Modes of Making’ Jen Dixon Buttons were an important fashion adornment on eighteenth-century clothing, especially men’s clothing. Inside each circle were worlds of pattern, colour, texture and reflected light. Part of the desire for buttons included novelty, variety and choice in … Continue reading “CMHC February Seminar [Online]”

The Centre is pleased to share the full list of seminars for January-May 2025, all are welcome, please do join us in-person or online as specified. Thursday  16  January (5:45-7:00pm)  In person – UoB Medical School Room WF15 Professor Jonathan Reinarz: ‘When do we celebrate?: 200 hundred years of Birmingham Medical School’ This seminar is … Continue reading “CMHC Seminars for 2025”

A guest blog piece from Gin Warren, Doctoral Researcher at the University of Cambridge. Gin attended the Centre for Midlands History and Cultures conference, ‘Landscape and Green Spaces in the Midlands: New Directions in Garden History’ held at Winterbourne House and Gardens in July 2024. ‘Keep off the grass’: subtle ways to exclude poor people from … Continue reading “‘Keep off the grass’: subtle ways to exclude poor people from ‘public’ green spaces”

The Friends of the Centre for Midlands History and Cultures in collaboration with the Nineteenth-Century Centre welcomes: Dr Victoria Mills (Birkbeck) “Orchid Jo”: Empire, Satire, and Political Self-Fashioning Narratives of nineteenth-century orchid collecting and their role in constructions of personal and national identity. Wednesday 27 November 5:00-6:30pm In person: Arts Building Room 104, University of … Continue reading “CMHC and Nineteenth-Century Centre Visiting Speaker Seminar – 27 November”

The Museum of Carpet at Kidderminster is a relative newcomer to the Midlands museum scene, having opened its doors to the public in 2012 after receiving a major Heritage Lottery Fund grant which enabled the conversation of a Grade II-listed building into a modern museum, complete with display galleries, archival space and rentable offices (to … Continue reading “The Museum of Carpet, Kidderminster”

Since its formation in 1948, successive members of the Centre for Regional and Local History (CRLH) – formerly the Centre for English Local History – have collected printed images of English buildings and landscapes (and some from Wales). Most of the material dates from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but there are a few items … Continue reading “Views of England and Wales: A New Online Collection”