| Description | As part of Birmingham Improvement Scheme to remove some of the slum housing located in central Birmingham, Birmingham Preparative Meeting was informed in 1879 that Birmingham Corporation's Improvement Committee had given notice for a compulsory purchase order of numbers 14 and 15 Old Square (purchased by the Preparative Meeting in 1853 for the use of the Friends' Reading Society and additional rental income), and of land in Upper Priory. A Building Committee comprising J.E. Baker, George Smithson, C.D. Sturge, J.W. Shorthouse, Joel Cadbury and C. Pumphrey was appointed to oversee dealings with the Corporation.
In exchange for selling numbers 14 and 15 Old Square to the Corporation, as well as a frontage in Upper Priory, and the right of way into the Minories, Birmingham Preparative Meeting acquired £3700, a piece of land comprising 270 square yards between Upper Priory and the burial ground, and the right to build over two thirds of the right of way from the Meeting House to Upper Priory School.
As a result of this acquisition of land, it was decided to use some of it for the construction of a building to be used by the Friends' Reading Society and as a door-keeper's residence. The building, designed by the Quaker architect, William Doubleday, comprised a committee room, a library, an additional classroom for the Priory Women's Adult School and accommodation for the Meeting's door-keeper and his family. The library opened in 1881.
Later changes made as a result of the newly acquired land included the extension of the Priory Rooms, the covering over of what was to become Dr Johnson Passage and an extension to the Women's Meeting rooms. |