We are delighted to report that Newman Brothers Coffin Fittings Factory has been granted planning permission for the restoration scheme put forward by Birmingham Conservation Trust.
We have been lucky enough to have been able to take visitors into the courtyard of the factory over the last year. We have shared with them stories of the growth and decline of the coffin fittings business, along with processes used in the manufacture of the coffin fittings, and the stories from ex workers from the business. The visits have been the cherry on the cake of our Sunday “City of 1000 trades” walking tour and a number of private Birmingham ghost walks, that during the hours of darkness have been a great backdrop to stories of burial customs, especially as there has been not lighting in the courtyard. We’ve gift aided 10% of the ticket sales of every tour we take in there, and you can either make a financial contribution or offer help as a volunteer by going to the Birmingham Conservation Trust web site.
Today’s walking tour of Birmingham takes in The Old Rep and The Electric. The Rep was the brain child of Barry Jackson, and was the start of repertory theatre in the UK. The Electric is the UK’s oldest working cinema, and may have inspired the opening of the worlds first Odeon cinema by Oscar Deutsch in Perry Bar in the late 1920’s
The starting point for our weekly Saturday City Centre Walking Tour had a ship parked on it this morning.
The ship is the stage for “The Voyage” an evening performance of dance, aerial acrobatics music and a spectacular film projection onto the Town Hall. The event marks the start of Birmingham’s contribution to the 2012 Cultural Olympiad. Performance Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th June at 10:00pm
The schedule for our themed Sunday walking tours has now been decided, with the first dates for each tour as follows:
The tours will run in rotation in this order for the next few months.
All tours start at 11.30 am from the corner of the Council House in Victoria Square and last for around 90 minutes. Full details can be found on the Walking Tours page, and there is a link for booking tickets online on the right hand side of this page.
Thank you for your continued support during 2011. We hope to see you on some of our tours in 2012. For more information please download our newsletter.
Sunday 11th December
Ian appeared on BBC WM to talk to Carl Chinn about working as a Blue Badge Guide, and Ghost Walks in Birmingham. Don’t worry if you missed it – you can listen to the interview here:
[audio:http://www.midlandsdiscoverytours.co.uk/Ian_on_Carl_Chinn_Show.mp3|autostart=no]
We are delighted to announce the launch of a new programme of tours in and around Birmingham for 2012.
From 7th January, we will be running walking tours in the centre of Birmingham every Saturday and Sunday* of the year, starting at 11.30am from Victoria Square.
Every Saturday will be a sightseeing walk exploring some of the most important sites around the city centre, ideal for local people and visitors alike. Sundays will be a themed tour, with a sequence of different themes operating in rotation. The first two will be “Heroes and Villains” on 8th January, followed by the Jewellery Quarter on 15th. Other themes will include entertainment, books and writers, canals and “city 1000 trades” – truly something for everyone. And for those who really want to discover Birmingham with us, we will be setting up a loyalty scheme, which will enable you to get a free ticket to the final tour of your personal collection!
All of our tours are both informative and entertaining, with expert local guides to provide plenty of insider stories and anecdotes about the city, its places and its people.
The first of these to be launched is our Valentine’s Tour on 12th. Find out about the most devoted, most unusual and most romantic couples who have lived in Birmingham. The tour ends as Urban Coffee in the Jewellery Quarter with an optional Romantic Afternoon Tea.
Also coming soon is our Children’s City Sightseeing Walk. This will run in every school holiday, with the first tour on Wednesday 15th February during half-term week. A variation on our regular city walks, it is specially designed to appeal to children (of all ages) and is a great activity to help keep the kids entertained during the holidays.
After a successful launch back in September, we will be running our next Tolkien Tour in the 4th quarter of 2012. This combined coach and walking tour is all about Tolkien’s early life in Birmingham and explores the places and events that inspired his fantastic writing. A must for anyone who loves Tolkien’s work, and the ideal Christmas gift for any Tolkien fan!
Watch out for more special tours, including Mother’s Day, the Golden Jubilee, and a sporting tour to coincide with the Olympics.
To book any of these tours click on the links on the left hand side of this page, or for more information visit our Special Tours page.
It was all hands on deck last night as we ran two simultaneous ghost walks around the city. We had 55 guests on the public City Centre Ghost Walk, and a private walk as a work night out for the legal firm Browne Jacobson. If you think you and your colleagues would enjoy a night out with a difference, then get in touch. We can tailor a walk just for you.
Halloween itself. We kicked off at the Urban Coffee Company, where Debra Carter from Midlands Face Painting was on hand to make us up, the Urban Coffee staff and anybody else who wanted to join in the fun, and told a few ghostly stories to whet people’s appetites. The ghost walk itself was a sell-out, and we were delighted that some of our clients dressed up for the occasion. As this was a special tour for Halloween, there were some new stories, and even a visit to the Newman Brothers coffin factory. We finished the evening with a party at the Red Lion pub, where Lynda Howell was presented with her prize for the best Halloween costume. We ate pumpkin soup, drank Halloween punch and had a good old boogie at the disco.
We started Halloween early when we led a 40-strong crowd on a ghost walk through the streets of Sutton Coldfield on Friday 28th October. The 2 hour tour started at Sutton Park’s Town Gate and followed a 2 mile long route, finishing at the haunted Gate Inn on Mill Street. Along the way the group heard of some of the spooky sights and sounds that have occurred in Sutton over the years. It has more ghosts than you would ever imagine from Roman ghosts and Royal ghosts to ghosts of monks, children, horses and even a poltergeist or two. In addition to ghost stories we told the crowd of murders and hangings, Halloween traditions, and the reason why apples feature so often in Halloween superstitions.
This is the first ghost walk we have done in Sutton Coldfield, but we plan to run more ghost walks in Sutton and other areas during 2012, so be sure to visit out site again to see what’s happening. In the meantime, when you are out and about in Sutton, keep looking behind you. You never know what you might almost see from the corner of your eye.
