Jonathan Meades, mentioning Burslem in the latest edition of The Oldie magazine…

“[…] George ‘Metz’ Robinson, whose masterpiece, Burslem Town Hall, is not Gothic. It is not even ‘Modern Gothic’. It is ur-Victorian and belongs to no known school [of architectural design]. [‘Metz’ became a newspaper art critic, but as a journalist in his younger years] he was sent to cover the Franco-Prussian War and was banged up in Metz during the siege – hence his nickname.” [He and his fellow] artists were outsiders – not part of the web of local [municipal architectural] practitioners who, decade after decade, have questionably enjoyed the bulk of municipal and commercial patronage [and who as a class came to be so corrupt both financially and aesthetically in the 1960s and 70s. Robinson can be compared to the men of later 19th-century Birmingham, who in architecture] “developed an idiom that has no peer in England [and who succeeded in making] Birmingham unique in its creation of an arts-and-crafts urbanism” […] “It can hardly be labelled a movement, but there is an undeniable accord between buildings of different types and uses.”

His article is actually on Birmingham but, as usual with such things, south Birmingham relentlessly hogs all the limelight. The article never strays north of the city-centre’s Broad Street. There’s a whole other north Birmingham up there, about which a young Meades admirer might make a Meades-like video series.