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Today, we’re publishing a deep dive into Birmingham’s famous ‘Irish Quarter’ around Digbeth and Deritend. But exactly how Irish is it, these days? The community’s best-known institutions, from pubs to churches, are up against an era of gentrification, development and rising prices, and in 2020, after 50 years on Digbeth High Street, the Irish Centre announced with a “sense of sadness and nostalgia” that it was moving to Kings Heath. Samuel McIlhagga’s report is below, but before we delve into that, here are a few things to do over the weekend.
Things to do
👠Strut down to Birmingham Fashion Week this Friday/Saturday, featuring a pre-launch reception at CFC Studio and a fashion show at Anchor Point. Friday's event runs from 5-9pm, focusing on networking and this year’s theme of sustainability. Saturday continues from 5-9pm with drinks, canapés, and the main fashion show. Dress code is Smart/Formal for Friday and Black Tie for Saturday; tickets from £22.38.
🎃Why not end Saturday with a bang at Curdworth Halloween and Fireworks event at King George V Playing Fields? The festivities kick off with a parade starting at The Beehive Pub at 6pm, followed by live music and a fireworks display. Don’t forget to wear your costume! Tickets from £6.13.
📜Alternatively on Saturday, trade fireworks for cannon fire at "Two Continents & Four Wars." This afternoon talk at The Fusilier Museum in Warwick delves into the remarkable stories of the 6th of Foot, a distinguished military unit that shaped the battlefields of America and Europe between 1775 and 1815. Learn about the bravery, struggles, and pivotal moments of these soldiers and explore their profound impact on history. Tickets from £6.
🛍️Head down to Craft & Flea on Sunday at the Custard Factory. This unique market brings together a curated selection of independent sellers, collectors, and creatives, offering everything from illustrations and vintage treasures to sustainable goods and food. With handpicked stalls showcasing high-quality products this sounds like a great way to wrap up a weekend and support small, local businesses. Entry from £2.50, and kids under 12 get in free.
Is Deritend still Birmingham’s Irish Quarter?
At the front of St Anne’s Catholic Church, a grand red brick Victorian building in Deritend, a board advertises worship times. Looking at it carefully as cars whizz down Alcester Street around me, I notice that both the ‘Sacrament of Reconciliation’ and ‘Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament’ have had their Wednesday and Saturday dates blacked out with scotch tape. This is the building where Cardinal Newman once served as a parish priest, and J.R.R. Tolkien worshipped as a young man. Today, an Irish tricolour flies limply in the autumn wind.
At the neighbouring Birmingham Irish Association, I ask a staff member if there’s a priest I can talk to at the church. “It’s like Eleanor Rigby town around there,” they reply. “A tiny congregation, really. Maybe if you went for Sunday Mass you’d catch him.”
It’s 3pm on a Thursday, and among the vast concrete stumps of skyscraper foundations and converted warehouses, the established Deritend Birmingham Irish institutions clustered around St Anne’s seem strangely quiet. Both the Irish Association and Diggitys Bar & Diner, a community centre with a massive Peaky Blinders mural and a cross out front, are closing up. Yet two minutes down the road, the locally owned Irish bars, the Fountain Inn and Spotted Dog pubs, are gearing up for another busy night. One part of the street feels deathly quiet, while the other is stirring into life.
In 2024, with long-standing community centres and pubs closing, I wanted to know how Birmingham’s famous ‘Irish Quarter’ is faring. Have institutions weathered the years-long pandemic, rocketing ground and private rents, increasing energy costs, supercharged development and the ambitious Birmingham tram and HS2 projects?
Back in 2020, the Digbeth Irish Centre closed its doors. Many saw this as the death knell for the Irish identity of Digbeth and Deritend. The centre was once considered an essential community hub in the mid-20th century, as well as a popular entertainment venue with performances from Blur, The Stone Roses and Kasabian, and regular wrestling tournaments. Its owner, Paul Owens, told the Birmingham Mail in 2019 that his inability to get planning permission from the council to expand operations and “regenerate the site” was the reason for its closure. In autumn 2022, the Kerryman pub on Digbeth High Street closed its doors to little fanfare. Birmingham City Council said that the redevelopment proposals originally put forward by Owens were “not considered to be ambitious enough in terms of scale and architecture, given the unique nature of the location.”
In turn, the Irish Centre has moved out to a more spacious suburban location at King’s Heath’s former 1960s Sports and Social Club on Wheelers Lane and rebranded as the New Irish Centre. A large development plan, pioneered by Owen’s Westbourne Leisure Limited, aims to expand the centre with a 59-bed hotel, a huge set of Gaelic football pitches and a boxing gym. Despite the Irish Centre leaving its Digbeth and Deritend site in January 2020, the new buildings are unfinished. Some sources inside the Irish community allege that the death of a man from injuries gained on site in November 2023 is the reason construction of the new and improved centre has not been completed.
The original Irish Centre building was demolished in 2023 when the land was bought by Court Collaboration, a Birmingham-based property developer. They plan to build ‘Tower Leaf’ and a segment of ‘Stone Yard’, two huge high-rise developments, at the old Irish Centre site, which together will provide 1,449 apartments in an area that is facing increasing demand, especially from single and childless young workers, and students, who are facing high-rents and cramped space. For some, this seems to be the most pragmatic way to meet demand.
However, many long-term residents feel that these developments offer nothing for current Deritend and Digbeth locals, emphasising apartments and market-rate rents over socially owned stock and family housing. One such person is Carl Chinn, a writer, radio presenter and Emeritus Professor of Community History at the University of Birmingham. “I'm a longstanding critic of the gentrification of Birmingham,” he tells me. “We need houses for working-class families, we need social housing.” Chinn says that much of Digbeth and Deritend has been “bought up by huge companies” and is being developed as “another high-rise apartment” area that will overshadow the historic landscape and pubs like The Old Crown and the Big Bulls Head. “I want to congratulate the Irish landlords and their sons and daughters” for clinging on, he adds.
Later on, I phone Trudy McGroarty, the manager of Diggity's Bar and Diner. “[There’s been] a really bad impact on our Irish nights,” she tells me. McGroarty communicates that many of the Irish bands she had booked over the years had to stop coming “because of the Clean Air Zone”, which was introduced by Birmingham City Council in June 2021 to combat air pollution. She told me that the van transport for the bands was costing over £100 in clean air fees each way. “Our older community, who used to love a get-together, a little dance, a little chat — they’ve all also got old cars,” McGroarty tells me. Diggity’s older Irish customer base has also found it hard to use other modes of transport. “There’s no night bus,” she says, and “many of the local taxis don’t come into Digbeth anymore. It’s an absolute nightmare.”
