Qualla: Edgbaston

Edgbaston: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JimmyGuano, CC BY-SA 3.0. Two of the strangest buildings in Birmingham stand within a few hundred yards of each other in Edgbaston. Perrott's Folly is a seven-storey tower built in 1758 by a landowner reportedly so grief-stricken at the loss of his wife that he raised a Gothic spire to look toward her grave. The Edgbaston Waterworks Tower, completed in 1870, climbs almost as high in dark brick a short walk away. A schoolboy named Ronald Tolkien grew up in their shadow in the 1890s. Decades later he wrote a story set in a place called Gondor, where two great towers guarded a kingdom under siege. Anyone who has stood on Waterworks Road at dusk and looked from one tower to the other has a fair idea where the picture came from.

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Image: JimmyGuano | CC BY-SA 3.0

Edgbaston: Where the trees begin

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Oosoom, CC BY-SA 3.0. Edgbaston earned its reputation in the 19th century, when the Gough-Calthorpe family controlled most of the manor and refused to let factories or warehouses be built on it. Birmingham was becoming the workshop of the world, but the Calthorpes kept their estate genteel, leasing vi...

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Image: Oosoom | CC BY-SA 3.0

Edgbaston: A neighbourhood of firsts

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JimmyGuano, CC BY-SA 4.0. For a suburb of just over forty thousand people, Edgbaston has accumulated a surprising number of beginnings. The Edgbaston Archery and Lawn Tennis Society, founded in 1860, is the oldest lawn tennis club in the world. Warwickshire County Cricket Club opened Edgbaston Cricket Gro...

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Image: JimmyGuano | CC BY-SA 4.0

Edgbaston: The Tolkien connection

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, CC BY 2.0. J. R. R. Tolkien lived in Edgbaston twice as a boy. After his father died in South Africa and his mother brought the family back to England, they settled briefly in nearby Sarehole, but Edgbaston became his home through his teens. Perrott's Folly and the Waterworks Tower were par...

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Image: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK | CC BY 2.0

Edgbaston: Prime ministers, suffragettes, and a chess grandmaster

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Law, CC BY-SA 2.0. Edgbaston's blue plaques read like a roll-call of Victorian and 20th-century Birmingham. Neville Chamberlain was born here in a house called Southborne and later represented the area in Parliament. His half-brother Sir Austen Chamberlain, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, lived at ...

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Image: Richard Law | CC BY-SA 2.0