Inn, the owners of
which, some 300 years ago, were named Leays. When the Market Hall was
built and sewers were laid round it, the workmen came upon what was at
the time imagined to be an underground passage, leading from the
Guildhall in New Street to the old Church of St. Martin's. Local
antiquarians at the time would appear to have been conspicuous by their
absence, as the workmen were allowed to close the passage with rubbish
without a proper examination being made of it. Quite lately, however, in
digging out the soil for the extension of the Fish Market at a point on
the line of Lease Lane, about 60ft. from Bell Street, the workmen, on
reaching a depth of 8ft. or 9ft., struck upon the same underground
passage, but of which the original purpose was not very apparent. Cut in
the soft, sandstone, and devoid of any lining, it ran almost at right
angles to Lease Lane, and proved to extend half way under that
thoroughfare, and some four or five yards into the excavated ground.
Under Lease Lane it was blocked by rubbish, through which a sewer is
believed to run, and therefore the exact ending of the passage in one
direction cannot be traced; in the excavated ground it ended, on the
site of a dismantled public-house, in a circular shaft, which may have
been that of a well, or that of a cesspool. The passage, so far as it
was traceable, was 24ft. long, 7ft. high, and 4-1/2ft. wide. As to its
use before it was severed by the sewerage of Lease Lane, the conjecture
is that it afforded a secret means of communication between two houses
separated above ground by that thoroughfare, but for what purpose must
remain one of the perplexing puzzles of the past. That it had no
connection with the Church or the Grammar School (the site of the old
Guild House) is quite certain, as the course of the passage was in a
different direction.

~Leasing Wives.~--In the histories of sundry strange lands we read of
curious customs appertaining to marriage and the giving in marriage.
Taking a wife on trial is the rule of more than one happy clime, but
taking a wife upon lease is quite a Brummagem way of marrying (using the
term in the manner of many detractors of our town's fair fame). In one
of the numbers of the _Gentleman's Magazine_, for the year 1788, Mr.
Sylvanus Urban, as the editor has always been called, is addressed as
follows by a Birmingham correspondent:--"Since my residing in this town
I have often heard there is a method of obtaining