145ft. long, 65ft.
broad, and 65ft. high; including the orchestra it will seat a few over
3,000 persons, while it is said that on more than one occasion 10,000
have found standing room. Considerable sums have been spent in trying to
improve the ventilation and lighting of the Hall, as well as in
redecorating occasionally, the medallions of eminent composers and other
worthies being introduced in 1876. For description of Town Hall organ
see "_Organs_."

_Windsor Street Gas Works_ with its immense gas-holders, retort-houses,
its own special canal and railway approaches, covers an area of about
twenty-six acres, extending almost from Dartmouth Street to Aston Road.
Though there can be no grand architectural features about such an
establishment certain parts of the works are worthy of note, the two
principal gas-holders and the new retort-house being among the largest
of their kind in the world. The holders, or gasometers as they are
sometimes called, are each 240ft. in diameter, with a depth of 50ft.,
the telescope arrangement allowing of a rise of 170ft., giving a
containing capacity equal to the space required for 6,250,000 cubic feet
of gas. The new retort house is 455ft. long by 210ft. wide, and will
produce about nine million cubic feet of gas per day, the furnaces being
supplied with coal and cleared of the coke by special machinery of
American invention, which is run upon rails backwards and forwards from
the line of coal trucks to the furnace mouths. The quantity of coal used
per week is nearly 4,000 tons, most of which is brought from North
Staffordshire, and the reserve coal heap is kept as near as convenient
to a month's supply, or 16,000 tons. The machinery for the purification
of the gas, the extracting of the ammoniacal liquor, tar and residuals,
which make the manufacture of gas so remunerative, are of the most
improved description.

_Workhouse_.--The first mention of a local institution thus named occurs
in the resolution passed at a public meeting held May 16, 1727, to the
effect that it was "highly necessary and convenient that a Public Work
House should be erected in or near the town to employ or set to work the
poor of Birmingham for their better maintenance as the law directs."
This resolution seems to have been carried out, as the Workhouse in
Lichfield Street (which was then a road leading out of the town) was
built in 1733 the first cost being L1,173, but several additions
afterwards made brought