Qualla: Chamberlain Square

Chamberlain Square: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Glyn, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the steps of this Birmingham square sits a bronze figure who has come down off his plinth. He is Thomas Attwood, economist and political reformer, sculpted in 1993 by Sioban Coppinger and Fiona Peever. His original pedestal stands empty above him; his bronze pages are scattered around his feet, mid-fall. The sculpture is one of the most unusual public monuments in Britain - a statue of a man who refused to be statuesque. Attwood led the Birmingham Political Union that helped force the Reform Act of 1832 through Parliament. He demanded the vote for ordinary men, then sat down. Now his bronze double sits permanently on the steps of Chamberlain Square, watching what the city did with the franchise he won.

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Image: Peter Glyn | CC BY-SA 3.0

Chamberlain Square: Joseph Chamberlain's Birmingham

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Original uploader was Oosoom at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0. The square is named for Joseph Chamberlain, mayor of Birmingham from 1873 to 1876, the man who municipalised the city's gas, water, and sewerage and put a generation of Victorian wealth into civic infrastructure. He was the kind of figure who is hard to imagine now: a former scre...

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Image: Original uploader was Oosoom at en.wikipedia | CC BY-SA 3.0

Chamberlain Square: Priestley and Watt

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rept0n1x, CC BY-SA 3.0. Joseph Priestley's statue stands here, moved from Victoria Square - then called Council House Square - in some earlier reshuffling. Priestley discovered oxygen in 1774, only to have his Birmingham laboratory and library destroyed in the Priestley Riots of 1791, the same riots tha...

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Image: Rept0n1x | CC BY-SA 3.0

Chamberlain Square: Five Years of Closure

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit BlueandWhiteStripes, CC BY-SA 4.0. In November 2015 the square closed to the public. It would not reopen until March 2021. The reason was the Paradise scheme, a seven-hundred-million-pound redevelopment by Argent Group that took down the Brutalist Birmingham Central Library and the Paradise Forum beneath it, both ...

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Image: BlueandWhiteStripes | CC BY-SA 4.0

Chamberlain Square: Winterval and the Markets

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Anneli Salo, CC BY-SA 3.0. The square hosts the Birmingham Christmas Craft Fair from the third Friday in November to 23 December each year. The event started in 1997 under the name Winterval - a portmanteau the council adopted to bundle a long stretch of seasonal programming together, and one that briefly ...

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Image: Anneli Salo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Chamberlain Square: What the Square Looks Onto

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JimmyGuano, CC BY-SA 4.0. Stand at Attwood's bronze steps and turn slowly. On one side is the City of Birmingham Council House, whose side elevation forms the eastern wall of the square. On another is the entrance to Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, partly housed within the same building. Across from th...

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Image: JimmyGuano | CC BY-SA 4.0