Bordesley Green
St Paul
St Paul's church in Finnemore Road opened in 1912 as a chapel of St Margaret's Ward End. It was built as part of the Ideal Village, a housing project of the Ideal Benefit Society with houses built at a lower density than contemporary estates and with shops, a park and a school.
The chapel was a simple red-brick building, with a bellcote with square windows and dormers. A parish was assigned out of St Margaret's in 1928 and it was consecrated as a parish church in its own right in 1929.
In 1968, a much larger church was built on Belchers Lane behind the chapel designed by Birmingham architect John P Osborne. The building has a low pitch copper roof and is designed as a trapezoid tapering symmetrically from west to east. There is a slender copper-covered spire. The stained glass is by Margaret Trehearne.
In 1993 the old chapel was converted into a a children’s nursery and in 1999 the church was reordered as a multi-purpose building for worship and as a conference centre with seven variously-sized meeting rooms.

William Dargue 13.09.2017