George Dawson and his Circle

The Civic Gospel in Victorian Birmingham - ‘By the gains of Industry, we promote Art’

‘In Birmingham you may generally recognise a board school by it being the best building in the neighbourhood, with its lofty towers, gabled windows, warm red bricks and stained glass.’ So observed the Pall Mall Gazette in 1894. The famous civic gospel shaped Birmingham as ‘the best governed city in the world.’  

The inspiration for the transformation of Birmingham in the second half of the 19th century came from the sermons of ‘the greatest talker in England’ George Dawson.

The men who oversaw the improvement of the town mostly sat on Sunday mornings in the pews of the Church of the Saviour. These were the men who were responsible for: a unique memorial library dedicated to the works of Warwickshire’s very own William Shakespeare; the foremost provincial institute (the Birmingham and Midland Institute); the first municipal technical school; the most famous art school in the country; and an enviable new art gallery. More improvements were developed by the town council: schools, baths and wash houses; the municipalisation of the gas and water supplies; and an impressive new thoroughfare, suitably christened Corporation Street.