Dear Patchers — today’s story is about a 51 metre tall Möbius strip in honour of God planned for the outskirts of Birmingham. Don’t know what a Möbius strip is? (read on).
If completed it will be taller than both the Angel of the North and Rio’s Christ the Redeemer. What, you may ask, is this gargantuan monument? A ploy by the mayor Richard Parker to win the esteem of the architectural community? Some kind of Brummie gathering point to replace the Spaghetti Junction? A prank by the sculptor Barbara Hepworth from beyond the grave?
No. This is the Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer — a £9.35 million (advertised value) monument made out of one million bricks planned for a field just outside Coleshill. If the man behind it, Richard Gamble, manages to pull the project off, the top of the structure will be seen from miles around. He believes it could become one of the most important religious monuments on the planet.
While it’ll cost the best part of £10 million if you want to construct an Eternal Wall, our own wall (that is, the paywall hiding halfway down this article) is anything but eternal. In fact, it's made out of incredibly flimsy construction materials. It’ll cost you only £8 a month to sign up as a paying member of The Dispatch and gain access to all of our journalism, including today’s piece. We need another 19 members to reach our next target of 1200 and it would be great if you could help us get there.
Fire Damage: Announcing the launch of a new Birmingham novel
Our friends at Floodgate, Birmingham's newest print publisher, have been up and running for two years, publishing collections of shorter works by local authors. In an exciting next step, they're now putting out their first novel. Fire Damage, by Nigel Proctor, is a gripping police procedural set over seven days during the Birmingham Blitz. Deeply researched, it's been described as 'historically vivid and humming with contemporary resonance' by author Charlie Hill.
The launch is next Thursday, 27th March at independent bookshop Voce Books in Digbeth. Tickets are just £3 (or £10.99, with a copy of the book) and you'll hear from Nigel about the inspiration for his book and what he thinks it tells us about Birmingham today. Tickets are available here.
This post was sponsored by Floodgate
Brum in Brief
🚨 A 40-year-old man has died following a collision with a police car in Acocks Green on Wednesday evening. West Midlands Police said the two officers were responding to a 999 call relating to a man carrying knives on Warwick Road just before 7pm when the collision occurred near the junction of Yardley Road and Florence Road. In a statement, the force said they are liaising with the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) and the family of the man who died is being supported. Other officers were sent to Warwick Road but there were no signs of disorder.
🚮 Bins latest! Three agency bin staff (hired to work during the strikes) have been fired by Birmingham City Council and have joined the bin strikes. Unite the Union claims the council told them they were being let go because there is a “lack of work” but that the real reason they were let go was for talking to striking workers. The council disputes this. A spokesperson told The Dispatch: “The reality is there was a continual pattern of them failing to follow clear instructions, which is not acceptable. Their dismissal was as a result of an independent disciplinary process." The impact of Brum’s bin strikes has been dubbed ‘binmageddon’ by BBC journalist Katie Thompson who witnessed residents swarm a refuse wagon as it drove down Anderton Park Road in Moseley on Wednesday. It got so messy, a councillor even called the police to calm the situation, with claims of residents from other areas driving to the street to drop their waste at the roadside and leave. Thankfully, a clean-up operation led by locals seems to have sorted out the worst of it.
🚗 Meanwhile, neighbouring Black Country councils are on high alert for Brummies who might attempt to make disposals at their depots. Gary Perry, the leader of Walsall Council, told the BBC their tips were checking for proof of residency and turning away any visitors as required. "Obviously we have sympathy for Birmingham residents,” he said. “We're not seeing many." Closer to home, visitors to Birmingham depots are voicing their frustrations: one said he deserved a council tax refund and a woman said the council should pay the bin staff “what they want to be paid. It’s having a knock on effect on everyone.” Council leader John Cotton, however, has reiterated that the transformation of the waste service must happen, to stop potential equal pay claims in the future. West Midlands Police have arrested two people this week in connection with the bin chaos: one man was arrested on Monday for possession of drugs and was referred for drug treatment, a second man was arrested on Tuesday for obstruction and was cautioned. How are the bin strikes affecting you and your area? Let us know: kate@birminghamdispatch.co.uk
Richard Gamble had a vision. Now he's building a 51-metre wall of prayer by a motorway
On a spring day in 2004, a lone figure dragged a giant cross through the Leicestershire countryside. As he did so, he received a “vision from God.” After days of physical exertion, hours of solitude, and 80 miles of walking, an “image” flashed through his head: “something that wasn’t my own — something outside of my thought pattern.” He was to build an enormous monument to the almighty.
Richard Gamble didn’t know it then, as his spine ached and his legs dragged, but that monument would one day reside just outside of Birmingham, visible from not one but two motorways (according to the website), the M42 and M6. It would be tall, taller even than Rio’s Christ the Redeemer, two and a half times as tall as the Angel of the North. Gamble hopes it will come to rival other giant monuments like the Eiffel Tower and Notre-Dame: connecting the architecturally curious to God through millions of Google searches.
The structure will be called the Eternal Wall of Answered Prayer: a 51 metre Möbius strip constructed out of a million bricks. The wall is intended to commemorate prayers purportedly answered by God, with each brick carrying an individual story, while also standing as a vision of “hope” in the Midlands. The project’s website advertises the wall as an effort in Christian crowdfunding — with each brick connected to a donation helping to fund the build. The sticker price for the wall, at least according to reports, is £9.35 million.
Twenty years after his vision, Gamble is now in his middle age, wide eyed, tall with a slightly scruffy beard. He used to work for British Gas prior to launching a series of companies in the software and marketing space, before a stint at Leicester City Football Club between 2009 and 2012 as a chaplain. Gamble now commands his own team and office, situated on top of a rise near Coleshill, tucked into the back of a huge Victorian mansion that resembles Wayne Manor from the Batman series. On a rainy day I meet him there. He tells me his plan is to do something truly “counter-cultural.”
