Old Barrow’s Store

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  Pato

  Historically: From 1849 until December 1973 there was a Barrow’s store in Bull Street, just round the corner from Lewis’s. Richard Tapper Cadbury arrived in Birmingham in 1794 and with his friend Joseph Rutter, opened a drapers shop at 92, Bull Street. His son John, born 1801, took an apprenticeship with a tea company in Leeds, and upon his return to Birmingham in 1824 he borrowed money from his father to start a business. He opened a shop the 4th March 1824 at 93 Bull Street, next door to his parents, selling tea, coffee and cocoa, and established the business as Barrows Stores Ltd. In 1849 Richard Cadbury Barrow took over the tea and coffee warehouse in Bull Street from John Cadbury. Corporation Street did not exist, it was built during the redevelopment of central Birmingham as part of the Improvement Scheme of the 1870s, breaking through Bull Street midway and taking away the dwelling place and rear garden of the Barrow Stores building. From then on Barrows was on the corner of Corporation Street and Bull Street. This new premises incorporated a ‘restaurant’ that was opened on the first floor of the stores in 1905, partly so that customers could sample the tea and coffee sold by Barrows. The fascination for Barrow Stores lead J.R.R. Tolkien to name his legendary student club T.C.B.S. (acronym for: Tea Club Barrovian Society) in a latinised version. Tolkien and his friends at King Edward’s School, the “big four”: Geoffrey Bache Smith, Christopher Wiseman, and Robert Gilson formed their society as upper-class students, attached to the library of the school. They had been designated “librarians” as an honor, and the several of them created the Tea Club when they began to put their used tea leaves in with the litter to be cleaned by the cleaning staff. Library rules prevented them from drinking tea, but they drank it covertly, revealing themselves only through the leaving of the tea leaves. When term was over and the library no longer a practical meeting place, the members moved to the Barrow’s Stores. Christopher Wiseman, explained in a 1987 interview: “That was what bound us together. Somehow you felt ‘this chap and I can talk about anything.’” Through the TCBS, Tolkien felt his first comradery in a group of all males, among friends dedicated to something higher than themselves. They were armed with intellect, talent, and the desire to better the world. It was a powerful action, Tolkien knew, and he certainly never outgrew this youthful enthusiasm for the all-male company. In a way, perhaps only for Tolkien himself, their society was considered nothing short of a religious order. He did not believe they were artistic revolutionaries in the ways that Hulme, Eliot, and Pound did, but rather preservers of the best of the past, meant to remind society of all that was good but had been forgotten. God had blessed them with the fire of the intellect, and with that fire, they were charged to “rekindle an old truth in the world,” and to speak on behalf of the Divine will and grace, “to testify for God and Truth,” as Tolkien wrote. Even after departing for Oxford, Tolkien tried to get together with the core of the TCBS as often as possible. During these get-togethers, which would often last entire weekends, the four shared as much poetry and art with one another as possible. They also talked ceaselessly. They became, Wiseman remembered, one person during these meetings.

  27-05-2020