Parish Offices.—­The meeting-place of the Board of Guardians and their necessary staff of officers has from the earliest days of Poor Law government been the most frequented of any of our public buildings.  Formerly the headquarters were at the Workhouse in Lichfield Street, but when that institution was removed to Birmingham Heath, the large building at the corner of Suffolk Street and Paradise Street was built for the use of the parish officers, possession being taken thereof Feb. 26, 1853.  Thirty years seems but a short period for the occupation of such a pile of offices, but as it has been necessary several times to enlarge the Workhouse, as well as to collect very much larger sums from the ratepayers, it is but in the natural order of things that the Overseers, Guardians, and all others connected with them should be allowed more elbow-room.  A parish palace, almost rivalling our Municipal Buildings in magnificence of ornate architecture, has therefore been erected at the junction of Edmund Street and Newhall Street, where poor unfortunate people going to the Workhouse, and whose ultimate destination will possibly be a pauper’s grave, may have the gratification of beholding beautiful groups of statuary sculpture, Corinthian columns of polished granite, pilasters of marble, gilded capitals, panelled ceilings, coloured architraves, ornamental cornices, encaustic tiles, and all the other pretty things appertaining to a building designed in a “severe form of the style of the French Renaissance,” as an architectural paper critic calls it.  Ratepayers will also have pleasure in taking their money to and delivering it over in “one of the most convenient suites of poor-law offices in the kingdom,” possibly deriving a little satisfaction from the fact that their descendants in less than a hundred years’ time will have to build another such suite of offices, or buy this over again, as the Guardians only hold the site (1,700 square yards) upon a ninety-nine years’ lease at a yearly rental of L600 (7s. per yard).  The building contract was for L25,490, besides extras, the architect being Mr. W.H.  Ward, and the fittings, internal decoration, and furnishing was estimated at about L5,000 more, though possibly as the chairs in the Boardroom are put down at L5 each, if other articles be in proportion, both sums will be materially increased.  The work was commenced in June, 1882, the memorial stone being laid February 15th, the following year.  The building, which has five storeys, stands on three sides of a square courtyard, and faces into Edmund Street.  Newhall Street, and a new thoroughfare made in continuation of Bread Street.  In general character the three faces are alike, the masonry being rusticated in Coxbench stone to the line of the second floor, the chiselling finishing with an entablature, and the remaining two storeys included in one order of Corinthian red granite pillars, which support the main entablature.  The front in Edmund Street,