The Trocadero, 17 Temple Street,

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, currently a pub, is a dazzling demonstration of the use of coloured glazed tile and

terracotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based ceramic glaze, unglazed or glazed ceramic where the pottery firing, fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, a ...

in the post-Victorian era of architecture. Formerly the Fire Engine House for the Norwich Union Insurance Company (1846, Edge & Avery), it was altered in 1883 to make the Bodega wine bar. It was given the current colourful glazed front in 1902 when it became the Trocadero. It is

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

. The pub is noted as a meeting place for the

Birmingham Surrealists The Birmingham Surrealists were an informal grouping of artists and intellectuals associated with the Surrealist movement in art, based in Birmingham, England from the 1930s to the 1950s. The key figures were the artists Conroy Maddox and John Me ...

group of artists and intellectuals associated with the city from the 1930s to the 1950s.

References

Sources

* *''Pevsner Architectural Guides - Birmingham'', Andy Foster, 2005, Grade II listed buildings in Birmingham {{WestMidlands-struct-stub