Day 32 - Small finds in the Library

This morning I was unceremoniously awoken by an idiot in my room's alarm - I don't think having an alarm is an issue but when you put it on sleep so it goes off every 5 minutes for the next hour - ISSUE.

So I was awake and though I might as well get on with it. As I walked through the Bullring I ran into a shooting for something obviously Bollywoodesque which was quite interesting to watch. But no time for distractions - there was searchin' to do!

I headed to the Central Library and walked up to the 6th floor and got my assigned film reader - the oldest one I'd seen so far and I had to stand up at times to read some of the information. Given that there were several different church centres in Birmingham I had quite a list to check out.

Thankfully though I did find some information - John Small's baptism Records and his parents John Small and Rebecca Ashford's marriage record.


The church where John was baptised was thankfully on my way back to the hostel so I dropped in to have a look and was given the royal tour. The spot is actually where Birmingham grew up around as it was first built by the French De Bermingham family in the 1200's. The church is called St Martin's - he being remembered for services to the poor. Today the church carries on this work helping local community with homelessness, drug and alcohol problems. When I was there I saw several homeless men catching a few moments of peace on the pews.

Rebecca and John were married at another St Peter's Church in Harborne which is a little distance out of the central city - I'll try and get to it but the next couple of days I'm doing some day trips to other cities so might not get the chance