liest built of our Dissenting places of worship was here situated.

~Old Square.~--There are grounds for believing that this was the site of
the Hospital or Priory of St. Thomas the Apostle; the reason of no
foundations or relics of that building having been come across arising
from its having been erected on a knoll or mount there, and which would
be the highest bit of land in Birmingham. This opinion is borne out by
the fact that the Square was originally called The Priory, and doubtless
the Upper and Lower Priories and the Minories of later years were at
first but the entrance roads to the old Hospital, as it was most
frequently styled in deeds and documents. Mr. John Pemberton, who
purchased this portion of the Priory lands in 1697, and laid it out for
building, would naturally have it levelled, and, not unlikely from a
reverent feeling, so planned that the old site of the religious houses
should remain clear and undesecrated. From old conveyances we find that
20s. per yard frontage was paid for the site of some of the houses in
the square, and up to 40s. in Bull Street; the back plots, including the
Friends' burial ground (once gardens to the front houses) being valued
at 1s. to 2s. per yard. Some of the covenants between the vendor and the
purchasers are very curious, such as that the latter "shall and will for
ever hereafter putt and keep good bars of iron or wood, or otherwise
secure all the lights and windows that are or shall be, that soe any
children or others may not or cannot creep through, gett, or come
through such lights or windows into or upon the same piece of land."
Here appears the motive for the erection of the iron railings so closely
placed in front of the old houses. Another covenant was against "putting
there any muckhill or dunghill places, pigstyes or workhouses, shopps or
places that shall he noysome or stink, or be nautionse or troublesome,"
and also to have there "no butcher's or smith's slaughter house or
smithey harth." One of the corner houses, originally called "the Angle
House," was sold in 1791 for L420; in 1805 it realised L970; in 1843,
L1,330? and in 1853, L2,515. The centre of the Square was enclosed and
neatly kept as a garden with walks across, for the use of the
inhabitants there, but (possibly it was "nobody's business") in course
of time it became neglected, and we have at least one instance, in 1832,
of its being the scene of a public demonstration. About the time of the
Parl