Birmingham Back to Backs

History

Back-to-back houses were built in their thousands across Birmingham's inner-city districts during the 19th century to house workers drawn to the city's expanding factories and workshops. The Public Health Act 1875 stopped further construction on health grounds, and slum clearance in the following century removed almost every other court. By the early 1970s the rest of Birmingham's back-to-backs had gone, their occupants moved to new estates such as Castle Vale and Chelmsley Wood, leaving this one court on Hurst Street and Inge Street as the sole survivor.

Architecture

The houses are built back-to-back around a shared courtyard, meaning each dwelling has neighbours on three sides and no rear door or garden, a layout once common in industrial Birmingham and now almost entirely gone.

Worth knowing

This is the only remaining example of a housing type that once dominated whole districts of Birmingham, including Ladywood, Aston and Handsworth, making it a rare physical record of ordinary working-class life in an industrial city.