A new Bullring
The silver discs of Selfridges rise over St Martin's, and the rebuilt Bullring opens to the world. Birmingham becomes one of Europe's youngest, most diverse cities — with residents tracing roots to more than 180 countries, and the open market still trading below.
The Bullring
Selfridges — the new face of an old market place
In September 2003 the rebuilt Bullring opened, and its Selfridges store — a curving form clad in thousands of gleaming aluminium discs — instantly became Birmingham's new icon, photographed around the world beside the medieval spire of St Martin's church. The much-mocked concrete Bull Ring of 1964 was gone; in its place, a symbol of a confident, twenty-first-century city.
The markets
And beneath it, the market trades on — 850 years and counting
The city the new Bullring served had been transformed. Birmingham entered the new millennium as one of Europe's youngest and most diverse big cities, its residents tracing roots to more than 180 countries, on its way to becoming a city where no single ethnic group forms a majority — a 'plural city' where everyone belongs to a minority, and to Birmingham.
And beneath the silver discs, continuity: the open-air markets of the Bull Ring trading on, as they have since a charter of 1166 — the longest thread in the city's story, where Victorian barrow boys, Windrush arrivals, Punjabi fabric sellers, and every other Brummie generation have met across a stall. Old and new, side by side: that is Birmingham.