St. Martin’s.—We find that the earliest mention of the mother church of St. Martin in our national records is a licence of the 6th of May, 1330 (4 Edward III.), to Walter de Clodeshale, of Saltley (then an adjoining hamlet), to grant lands for the endowment of a priest to say mass daily at the altar of the Virgin in St. Martin’s. Seventeen years afterwards (21 Edward III.), Richard, son of Walter de Clodeshale, obtained a licence for a further grant to endow a second priest to say daily mass.
In 1392 (16 Richard II.), there is a record of a licence to found and endow a guild in honour of The Holy Cross, and another chantry in St. Martin’s for two chaplains. All these charities were suppressed at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries. The endowments of the Clodeshale charities were sold,[34] as was also a small part of the endowments of the Guild of the Holy Cross. The rest were re-granted by Edward VI. for the foundation and endowment of the Grammar School.
For three centuries after its foundation St. Martin’s Church must have been nearly at the top of the town, which consisted, as Leland saw it even in 1538, of one long street, namely, the present Digbeth and High Street, and the old church sufficed for all its wants, especially as the lower part of the town below Digbeth was served by the chapel of St. John, noticed under Aston parish.[35]
The tower and spire, having become unsafe, were taken down and rebuilt in 1855, and in 1872 the rebuilding of the rest of the church was commenced, and it was finished and re-consecrated on the 20th of July, 1875. Attached to the church are mission rooms in Barwick Street and Park Street.
The original parish has been, by the successive agencies of special acts of parliament, the orders of the Church Building Commissioners (1818 to 1856), and afterwards of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, or by the Bishop in exercise of powers given by 1 and 2, W. IV., c. 38 (now repealed), divided into five rectories and twenty-one vicarages (all incumbents of churches entitled to perform marriages, churchings, and baptisms, and receive the fees for their own use, being now termed vicars under the statute 31 and 32 Vic., c. 117). The successive divisions are detailed in chronological order.
St. Philip’s.—In the early part of the reign of Queen Anne, Birmingham had extended northwards and upwards from the mother church, and this necessitated the foundation of St. Philip’s Church and parish, created by special Act of Parliament (7 Anne, c. 131, A.D. 1708) entitled “An Act for building a parish church and parsonage house, and making a new church and new parish in Birmingham, to be called the parish of St. Philip.” The preamble recites that there was only one church in the parish of Birmingham, and that it was expedient to build another in the “high town quarter.” It then carves out of the parish of St. Martin, the parish of St. Philip, and constitutes it a rectory. The church was consecrated in 1715, and partly rebuilt and enlarged in 1884. Its situation, between Colmore Row and Temple Row, is the finest in the town.
St. Bartholomew.—The next ecclesiastical structure in order of time, was St. Bartholomew’s, built in 1749 as a chapel of ease to St. Martin’s, to accommodate the then rapidly increasing population east of St. Martin’s. The land was the gift of Joseph Jennens, whose name is still commemorated in Jennens Row. In the year 1847, it was created a district chapelry, and in 1869, a part of the district was assigned to the consolidated chapelry of St. Gabriel. The churchyard and the adjoining burial ground of St. Martin, containing four acres and a half (called the Park Street Burial Ground) were, in the year 1880, converted by the Corporation into a public garden. There is a mission room in Fox street, attached to the church.
In the year 1772, the first Church Extension Society was formed in Birmingham for the purpose of building “one or more churches,” which resulted in the passing of another Act of Parliament (12 Geo. III., c. 64, A.D. 1772) “for building two new chapels, and providing burial places thereto.” The first built of these two chapels was—
St. Mary’s, completed in 1774 on land granted by Mary Weaman, who gave her christian name to the church and her surname to the adjoining street. It was originally a chapel of ease to St. Martin’s, but was created a district chapelry in 1841. The chapel was thoroughly renovated in 1857, and in 1882 the disused burial ground was, at the cost of the Corporation, laid out as a garden for public use.
St. Paul’s.—The other of the two churches built under the act of 1772 was St. Paul’s, in what was then the northernmost part of Birmingham. It was built in 1779, on land given by Charles Colmore out of a large estate he had there. It was created a district in the year 1841.