Geograph - photograph every grid square

Spon Street was once a major thoroughfare leading westward to Birmingham until the turnpike Holyhead Road was created. However it continued to take heavy traffic until the ring road cut it in half in the 1960s. Many of its timber framed buildings had survived 1930s redevelopment clearances, wartime bombing and post-war redevelopment, unlike those in other areas of the city centre. In 1969 it was decided to create a conservation area and preserve other surviving timber framed buildings by moving them here and restore the existing buildings. The numbering of Spon Street is consecutive, rather than odd on the left, even on the right - so the building in the foreground left is no. 9 and that on the right, no. 184. The only timber framed buildings remaining in Spon Street on the other side of the ring road are Black Swan Terrace, 119-123 Spon Street. Link

The junction to the left was formerly Queen Victoria Road and that to the right is the Lower Holyhead Road, truncated by the ring road.

On the east side of the city centre a further set of timber framed buildings survive in Far Gosford Street. Link

Details of some of the buildings visible here:
First left: No. 9, formerly 7 Much Park Street. Late 15th/early 16th century. Dismantled 1970, reconstructed here 1971/2. On the site of the old Plough Inn. The visible roof trusses are of the clasped purlin type.

White building jutting out obliquely on left at further end: no. 22 & 23. The Old Windmill public house ('Ma Brown's'). Original site. 16th century or earlier. Reference to it being a pub in 1756.

1960s tower block Meadow House is on the far side of the ring road.

Three storeyed building further end right: nos. 163-4, formerly 8,9,10 Much Park Street. First half 15th century. Dismantled 1971, reconstruction here completed 1974. This is a high status building and would not normally have been found in an artisan quarter like Spon Street. It was probably originally 2 merchants houses, with ground-level shops.

The three buildings in the foreground, right are of more recent date:
180-181 was The Rising Sun Inn and was built in 1896. Next door, 182 Fairfax House was built in 1901 on the site of Fairfax's Charity School. The Tin Angel, no. 184, formerly WH Furniture Co. was built in 1909 (the year is engraved on the circular roof decoration) on the site of a watchmaker's house and workshop.