 There have been a lot of
changes along High Street in the city centre. Many
of the old buildings, that once lined the street, have
been swept away in the modernization. However,
there is a group of 19th Century buildings that are
still with us, just before the point where High Street
makes a distinct right turn and heads off into the
Northern Quarter. Today the buildings are used as
offices and warehouses on the upper floors, and at
street level there is an OSKA clothing store, the
English Lounge pub and a Zain cafe. However, this
wasn't always the case. The map below is my
version of one dated 1886 and you can see that the Zain
cafe was The Blue Bell pub. Next door was the
Wheatsheaf Hotel and the rest of the buildings were
owned by various textile and clothing companies.
    The English Lounge
occupies the building that was once the Wheatsheaf
Hotel. If you click on the links below you can
see the Wheatsheaf Hotel in 1959 and 1970
respectively.
 The Zain's cafe
occupies the former Blue Bell Public House.
There was a Wheatsheaf Public House and a Blue Bell Public House on this site in 1849. They were still there on the 1886 map but by then there had been a significant change in the layout of the streets. In 1849 High Street veered off to the left and became Nicholas Croft. By the time the 1886 map was drawn High Street had been extended. At the corner with Turner Street it had been re-routed to the right cutting its way through existing buildings and carrying traffic into the heart of Smithfield Market. One affect of this change in street layout was that it appears that the Blue Bell Public House had to be rebuilt. To accommodate the new street, the corner was truncated and this was probably achieved by rebuilding the Blue Bell pub. So it would appear that the Zain cafe, which curves around that corner today, was once the Blue Bell Public House, as it was in 1886, but that may not be the building that was there in 1849.  Close Window |