Birmingham Back to Backs

Title: Birmingham Back to Backs

Built in: 1802

Location: 50-54 Inge Street, Birmingham B5 4TE

Short intro: A carefully restored and atmospheric nineteenth-century courtyard of houses displaying how nineteenth-century working-class people lived

Description: Set in the bustling Chinese quarter, Birmingham Back to Backs are the city’s last surviving houses of their kind, of the thousands of shared housing courts that once housed the rapidly growing population of an industrialising and expanding Birmingham. The houses were lived in right up until 1966, despite the fact that the public health act of 1875 deemed them unsatisfactory housing. Today, the courtyard has been restored to perfect condition, and the houses display the kinds of living conditions the different inhabitants of the Back to Backs would have lived in, from the 1830s to the 1970s. See the 1830s family home of the clockmaker Mr Levy, the 1870s home of Mr Oldfield, glass eye make; the 1930s home of locksmith George Mitchell. Finally, experience the tailor’s shop of George Saunders, who ran his shop from the Back to Backs until 1970.