Henry Parr, the first landlord of the Cottage of Content, Sheepcote Lane, was an active supporter of reformist causes. Following the execution of Louis XVI in January 1792 and the French declaration of War with Britain in the February, any public expressions of support for democratic principles or expressions of concerns of the effects of the war on trade were met with both popular loyalist and Government hostility. In May 1794 James Watt observed that :
‘there are King’s messengers in Birmingham, who have taken up on Parr, who kept a reforming club 1 at his house, and on one or two others. The soldiers were ordered under arms to prevent tumult.’ 2
Birmingham’s reformers are said to have enjoyed a ‘revival of support’ in 1795 and1797.3 Their last incarnation, The Birmingham United Corresponding Society,4 was deemed by loyalist elements to be a ‘Jacobin’ organisation.
At their last recorded meeting, fifteen members gathered at Henry Parr’s Cottage of Content on August 3, 1797 with John Binns,5 a London delegate who had been recently arrested, tried at Warwick and acquitted, present. They were spied upon and disturbed by a gang of drunken loyalists from the nearby White Horse in Friday Street. The rights and wrongs of the meeting and its opponents were debated in a public exchange of letters.6
Concerns, even in the reformist movements, over the increasing authoritarianism and militarism displayed by the French Revolutionary state made any radical cause, especially one opposed to war with France, extremely unpopular. Despite the Society’s claim following John Binns trial that they were ‘daily increasing in numbers’, there is no record of their survival after 1797.7
The Cottage of Content is described 8as a ‘solitary house built in the fashion of the olden time, and presenting a peculiarly rustic appearance .. with a beautiful garden containing several pleasant arbours, adorned with sylvan taste, and covered with evergreens’ set in ‘ a beautifully-picturesque lane.’
The semi-rural nature of Sheepcote Lane 9 can be seen even on John Kempson’s Town of Birmingham map of 1808. Ebenezer Robins Birmingham map of 1820 shows the gardens of the Cottage in Colmore land, with Botany Bay Gardens, on land belong to the Rector of St Martin’s opposite. John Piggot Smith’s Map of Birmingham shows the pub and pleasure garden surrounded on all sides by small allotment gardens.
Sale descriptions of some of these allotments13 give an idea of the character of the area:
‘ … in the highest state of Improvement; the soil remarkably rich and full of manure; the Vegetables and Hot-bed Plants in very great forwardness; the Fruits (of which there is great Plenty) are all the best and in their Prime. There is also a Collection of choice Flower Roots, variously dispersed, and a number of Auricula Plants in Pots; likewise a handsome Brick Summer-House, and other Conveniences, and several painted Garden Screens, Tools, &c….’; 14
‘…with an excellent Summer House, a choice Collection of Fruit Trees, Flowers, Shrubs, well fenced, &c,..’; 15
‘…well fenced, and planted with Fruit Trees and Vegetables, in a high state of cultivation, with a Brick Summer House and other Conveniences,…’; 16
& ‘ … well planted with Gooseberry and Currant trees, fine Raspberries, Flowers, Shrubs’ & c, and stocked with Asparagus, and Vegetables of various kinds, containing a Summer house, a shaded Seat, &c…’ 17
Birmingham Trade directories list Henry Parr as the publican of the Cottage of Content Coffee House and Tea Gardens, Sheepcote Lane, from 1803 until 1823. 18 In 1835 and 1839 Edward Tidman is listed there as a beer retailer19 but the licence was transferred in May 1841 to Henry Tidman.20 At his Insolvency hearing in Birmingham’s Court House on August 14, 1841 Edward Tidman is described as ‘formerley of the Cottage of Content, Cottage Lane, otherwise Sheepcote Lane.’ 21 He died in Worcester on September 6, 1841.22 In 1842 Henry Tidman is listed as the licencee 23 but by 1845 Ann Tidman has taken over. 24
As the above Tithe map shows, by 1845 the area around the Cottage was no longer so rural. Ann Tidman was to be the last proprietor.26 Writing in 1850 it was said that ‘The Cottage of Content is no longer an attraction to the mechanics of Birmingham.’ 8 The land had been compulsorily purchased by the Stour Valley Railway in 1847 27 and ‘over its well-remembered site a railway bridge has subsequently been erected.’ 8
John Townley
Footnotes
1. The Birmingham Society for Constitutional Information, founded November 1792, were in favour of Parliamentary reform and an end to the war with France which they saw as injurious to Birmingham’s trade.
2. From Cambridge Historical Journal, 9, 349 quoted in Victoria County History of Warwickshire, Vol 7, p.282
3. Money, John, Experience and Identity –Birmingham and the West Midlands 1760-1800, 1977, p236
4. When, in 1796, The Birmingham United Corresponding Society asked for guidance from the London Corresponding Society on how to act under the 1795 Treason & Sedition laws, two delegates, John Binns and John Gale Jones were sent to speak to them.
5. Binns had been arrested at the Birmingham meeting in March 1796 on a Home Office warrant He was tried at Warwick in August 1797, where the jury refused to convict.
6. Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, August 7 & 14, 1787, quoted in Langford, John Alfred, A Century of Birmingham Life, Vol2,1868, pp174-176.
7. From Trial of John Binns, Birmingham, 1797, quoted in Victoria County History of Warwickshire, Vol 7, p.284
8. Barr, Rev. J.T., ‘The Cottage of Content’, in The Christian Miscellany and family visiter for the Year 1850, Vol 5, London, 1850 p51
9. Sheepcote Lane, which ran from Sheepcote Street (previously called Crown Street and before that part of Sheepcote Lane) to Summer Hill was, from 1820 to1833 called Cottage Lane.
10. LoB MAP/384604, Kempson, John, Town of Birmingham, 1808
11. LoB MS3154/4, Robins, Ebenezer, Birmingham, 1820. The purple colour wash denotes Colmore land.
12. LoB MS3700/13/1/1/1, Piggot-Smith, John, Map of Birmingham engraved from a minute trigonometrical survey made in the years 1824 & 1825, 1828.
13. Allotments or Guinea Gardens see Fn17 ‘The Rent is one Guinea per Annum.’
14. Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, June 12, 1797, ‘situate in the Road leading from the Crescent Bridge to the Cottage of Content, in the second Walk on the left hand from the Pit of Water, and the fifth Garden on the Right in that Walk.’ quoted in Langford, 1868 , p9
15. ABG, May 17, 1802, ‘situated near the Cottage of Content…. N.B. – Mr Parr, at the Cottage, will shew the Garden.’ Ibid p196
16. ABG, April 22, 1805, ‘pleasantly situated, being No.145 in the Cottage Field, the Central Walk leading from the Cottage of Content to the Sand Pits’, ibid p198
17. ABG, May 11, 1812, ‘in Love Lane, near the Cottage of Content’ ibid 312
18. Chapman’s Birmingham Directory, Birmingham, 1803; Chapman’s Annual Directory of Birmingham, Birmingham, 1808; Wrightson, Robert, New Triennial Directory of Birmingham, Birmingham, 1815, 1818 & 1823
19. Wrightson & Webb, The Directory of Birmingham, Birmingham, 1835 & 1839
20. Birmingham Journal, , March 6 & May 8 1841
21. London Gazette, August 14, 1841
22. Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, September 13, 1841
23. Wrightson & Webb, The Directory of Birmingham, Birmingham, 1842
24. 1845 directory
25. LoB MS3700/13/1/1/2 Plan of the Parishes of St. Martin, St Thomas, & All Saints in Birmingham in the County of Warwick, 1845
26. Wrightson & Webb, The Directory of Birmingham, Birmingham, 1847
27. Birmingham Journal, August 21, 1847
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