le date. The present edifice, though it incorporates
some few remains of former erections, and will always be known as the
"old" church, really dates but from 1809-10, when it was re-built
(opened Sept 10, 1810) but, as the Edgbastonians began to increase and
multiply rapidly after that time, it was found necessary to add a nave
and aisle in 1857. There is now only accommodation for 670, and but a
hundred or so of the seats are free, so that possibly in a few more
years the renovators and restorers will be busy providing another new
old church for us. The patron is Lord Calthorpe, and the living is
valued at L542, but the power of presenting has only been exercised
three times during the last 124 years, the Rev. John Prynne Parkes
Pixell, who was appointed vicar in 1760, being succeeded by his son in
1794, who held the living fifty-four years. At his death, in 1848, the
Rev. Isaac Spooner, who had for the eleven previous years been the first
incumbent of St. George's, Edgbaston, was inducted, and remained vicar
till his death, July, 1884. In the Church there are several monuments to
members of the Calthorpe family, and one in memory of Mr. Joshua
Scholefield, the first M.P. for Birmingham, and also some
richly-coloured windows and ancient-dated tablets connected with the
oldest families of the Middlemores and others.

_Hall Green Church_ was built in Queen Anne's reign, and has seats for
475, half free. It is a vicarage (value L175), in the gift of trustees,
and now held by the Rev. R. Jones, B.A.

_Handsworth Church_.--St. Mary's, the mother church of the parish, was
probably erected in the twelfth century, but has undergone time's
inevitable changes of enlargements, alterations, and rebuildings, until
little, if any, of the original structure could possibly be shown. Great
alterations were made during the 15th and 17th centuries, and again
about 1759, and in 1820; the last of all being those of our own days.
During the course of the "restoration," now completed, an oval tablet
was taken down from the pediment over the south porch, bearing the
inscription of "John Hall and John Hopkins, churchwardens, 1759," whose
economising notions had led them to cut the said tablet out of an old
gravestone, the side built into the wall having inscribed on its face,
"The bodye of Thomas Lindon, who departed this life the 10 of April,
1675, and was yeares of age 88." The cost of the rebuilding has been
nearly L11,000, the whole of w