The Colmore Family
The Colmore family was one of the wealthiest families in the history of Birmingham. Being of French origin, the Colmores gained their wealth from dealing in fabrics in the 15th and 16th century, which they then invested in lands, mostly in and around Birmingham. Their family home was a large supposedly timber-framed building in vicinity of the present site of the Moor Street Station.
After Henry VIII’s dissolution of monasteries, which involved a number of monastic estates becoming available for purchase and occupation, William Colmore bought the Conyngre, the “rabbit warren” of St Thomas's Priory, located to the north of the town.
Mediterranean rabbits had been introduced in England during the Norman times, and although they needed to be nurtured carefully in the colder English climate, they have been bred commercially by the 13th century. They were considered an expensive luxury. The soft sandy soil of Birmingham was ideal for rabbit farming, as ditches and banks topped with impenetrable shrubs were used to contain rabbits within the property.
In the early 17th century, William Colmore’s son, William the Younger built New Hall, a large Jacobean mansion for the Colmore family on top of their estate. Newhall Street was at that time an avenue lined with elm trees that led to the house.
The industrialisation of Birmingham led to an expansion of the town in a north-westerly direction, and soon new buildings surrounded the Newhall estate.
In 1746, Ann Colmore gained a sponsored private act of Parliament, which allowed the family to sell their estate as plots. New buildings soon appeared in the area: Colmore Row (then New Hall Lane) was almost completely built up within five years, while the rest of the estate was completely transformed over the next 25 years. New Hall family home itself was demolished in 1787, to allow for more building work to be done in its place.
But who were the Colmores?
Ann Colmore was the head of the family and she was the one who sold the estate in the 1740s in order to raise funds from her land. Because of her firstborn son William’s death, her second son Charles became her successor in the estates when she decided to retire and go to Bath. Charles became the patron of St. Paul’s Chapel at its consecration in 1779.
Charles Colmore and his wife had four children: Charles, Mary Anne, Lionel and Caroline, and none of them had married. Streets around St Paul’s Square were named after three of Charles’ sons and daughters. Charles Jr. died in 1785, followed by Mary Anne in 1794 and Charles Sr. in 1795. Lionel succeeded his father as head of the estates and became the patron of St. Paul’s Chapel. According to some sources, Lionel was a traveller and had visited Russia. After his death in 1807, his sister Caroline inherited the estate and became the third patron of St. Paul’s Chapel.
In 1809, Caroline built a short arm of the Birmingham and Fazeley canal that extended to a basin near New Hall Hill and George Street, into an area of sand pits, which probably was a strategic move, as sand was on high demand for new building work in the expanding town. The canal was known as "Miss Colmore's Canal", until renamed as Whitmore's Canal, and eventually filled in in the 1950s.
Caroline Colmore died without an heir in 1837, and Digby Latimer was named in her will as the trustee of the Colmore estates. Digby Latimer was the third son of Edward Latimer, to whom Caroline sold the advowson to become the patron of St. Paul’s Chapel a couple of years earlier in 1826.
References:
Birmingham Live (2008) A Country Feel Dominated Most of Summer Lane. Birmingham Mail [online]. Available from: https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/a-country-feel-dominated-most-of-summer-62215 [Accessed 21st April 2018].
Chris Upton [n.d.] Birmingham's Hidden Jewel. BBC Legacies [online]. Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/work/england/birmingham/article_2.shtml [Accessed 21st April 2018].
John Sawkill (2012) The Not-So-Straightforward Story of the Patrons of St.Paul’s Church, Birmingham: 1779 – 2012. Jsprints-ink.co.uk [online]. Available from: http://jsprints-ink.co.uk/the-notsostraightforward-story-of-the-patrons-of-st-pauls-church-birmingham-1779-2012 [Accessed 21st April 2018].
William Dargue (2018) The Newhall Estate, Newhall Hill, City Centre. William Dargue - A History of Birmingham Places & Placenames from A to Y. [online]. Available from: https://billdargue.jimdo.com/placenames-gazetteer-a-to-y/places-n/the-newhall-estate-city-centre [Accessed 21st April 2018].
