The Edwardian Lady and Birmingham New Street

Edith Holden is famous for her Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, written in 1906.  However she also had a successful career as an artist and illustrator.  Her biography, by Ina Taylor, says:

In art particularly the town was well served with galleries at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists [RBSA] where the two exhibitions every year attracted great interest. A museum was established, and there was also the Municipal Art School, which had a reputation for being the best art school outside London.

Edith entered the art school at 13, having already shown a talent for sketching. While at the school, she won prizes.  When she completed her basic training, she specialized in animal paintings.

When she was 19 one of her paintings was accepted for the RBSA Autumn Exhibition. From 1890 to 1907 she regularly exhibited at the RBSA.  Wikipedia tells us that, at this time, the gallery stood behind a neo-classical portico in New Street. It says: Increasing financial pressure in the early years of the 20th century led to the society's landmark New Street building being demolished and rebuilt as part of a commercial redevelopment.

The RBSA website says:  In April 2000, after being based at New Street in Birmingham since 1829, the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists relocated to a new gallery just off St Paul’s Square.


New Street's Grand Central station - work continues on the roads outside.

When Edith was exhibiting her paintings in New Street, there was already a fine, Victorian station. The New Street, New Start web site tells us: The station was badly damaged by bombing raids in World War ll leading to the removal of the roof after the war.  The original station was finally demolished in 1964. The station that replaced it has just been superseded by the new "Grand Central" station. I've travelled through there several times as I am working just a few stops down the line , near Birmingham international.

It says in today's Chronicle ...

In her "Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady" entry for February the 3rd, Edith Holden states:

It says in today's Chronicle that at Dover a Blackbird's nest with two eggs have been found at Edenbridge, a Hedge-sparrow's with four eggs and at Elmstead, a robin's with five eggs.

The beginning of 2016 too has been extremely mild. Although, like Edith, I read about unseasonable animal behaviour in the newspaper, I got much more immediate information through BBC Winterwatch and Twitter, especially Winterwatch's #WeirdWinter theme.  All sorts of people reported untimely wildlife behaviour including January swallow sightings and young grebes on the Thames. Earlier in the month, I was one of hundreds people who took part in the BSBI's New Year's Plant Hunt and (in Sussex) found Hawthorn and Cowslips in flower - both of these should be out in May.

January cowslip (Sussex)

While I was looking for flowers, my mobile phone and Twitter enabled me to share photos with many of my fellow plant hunters, instantly.  Back in 1906, Edith, her friends and neighbours would have shared information via face-to-face conversations, letters and parcels. Telephones were available but calls were costly. So while she could write down her observations in a diary and provide illustrations for magazines, it would be 70 years before her diary got the audience it deserved.

Easy mass communication has made crowd-sourced citizen science projects commonplace. Over the last weekend of January, the RSPB ran the #BigGardenBirdWatch. About half-a-million people count the birds that land in their gardens over the course of one hour. The RSPB then collects all this information and compares it to previous years.    As well as doing my own bird count, in Sussex, I have been able to follow others' sightings via Twitter. 

My #BigGardenBirdWatch notes (Sussex)

I think that, as someone with a keen interest in nature, Edith would have enjoyed taking part in the #BigGardenBirdwatch. As a teacher, she wrote her diary as a model for her pupils to follow. Perhaps if she were living and working today, she would  have followed the RSPB's advice to devote a lesson to observing the birds.