| Description | There is an index 'Borough of Birmingham Ratings Maps Index', in the HRA Quick Reference. This was compiled by Richard Clarke, Borough Valuer and Parish Surveyor for the Parish of Birmingham, in 1870-71 when he used the ratings maps for the revaluation of the Borough for purposes of assessment.
According to correspondence pasted at the back of the 'Borough of Birmingham Ratings Maps Index', these tracings were made from maps in the possession of the Borough Surveyor, J. Pigott-Smith which he drew up in 1855 by order of the Corporation. The later alterations and additons on the were made in a different colour on the originals by the Assistant Surveyor in the various city Wards. On completion of the Valuation, Richard Clarke had two copies of each block plan traced and also two copies of all the valuation books were made with full details of each building and reference letter as shown on the plans. One of the complete copies was delivered to the Guardians of the Poor of the Parish of Birmingham for that portion of the borough in the parish. The other complete copy was handed to the Corporation's Finance Rate and Appeal Committee and it is thought that these tracings are from this copy, the remainder of which, it is believed, were destroyed on the abolition of the Improvement Rate Department by the Corporation.
A full list of the contents of this collection can be found below. To search the catalogue for a particular street:
- Go to the Advanced Search area of our Birmingham Archives and Collections' CalmView page https://calmview.birmingham.gov.uk/CalmView/
- Enter search term MAP 270023* to RefNo field
- Enter word or phrase or variations of spellings to Any Text field (for e.g. Smalbrook Street, Horse Fair / Horsefair)
Please note: The maps will show streets that no longer exist today, notably the streets that existed around the present day Corporation Street / Bull Street area of the city prior to the passing of the Borough Improvement Scheme, 1875 (for example Lichfield Street, The Gullet, John Street). Conversely, some streetnames that exist today would not have shown on these maps, either because the street had not been built yet or because the street bore a different name!
Also note: In terms of geographical area, the Rating Maps only cover the rateable area of the borough of Birmingham as it existed in the late 1860s / early 1870s, which was a much smaller area than exists today. For example there are no rating maps for suburban districts like Kings Norton, Northfield, Aston, Handsworth and other areas of present day Birmingham that were incorporated into the rest of the city following the Greater Birmingham Extension Act, 1911.
Final additional note: The Rating Maps catalogued and digitised here form only part of a much larger sequence of aperture card maps, a few of . These have yet to be catalogued to item level and digitised, but may be viewed in the open access Heritage Research Area during our normal service opening hours, and the paper index consulted to locate aperture card plans relating to specific streets. Some of these cards will duplicate hardcopy tracing paper maps listed here, but in many cases the aperture cards comprises the only known surviving examples of such maps in our collections!
A detailed JPEG key map to the main sequence of Rating Map tracings has been created by one of our researchers (based on a digitised copy of MAP/73252 in our Local Studies Map Collections), with another key map detailing a small number of outlier plans from the tracing paper maps (based on a later Ordnance Survey map of the covered areas). Both of these plans keys are attached to this catalogue record (see Multimedia field below) and can also be found in the digital archive of these plans currently managed in Preservica (see URL link below). |