Hall being on Nov. 28th.  The outside measurements of the Hall are—­ Length 175ft., breadth 100ft., height 83ft., viz., basement 23ft., columns 36ft., cornice 9ft., and pediment 15ft,.  The forty columns are each 3-1/2ft. diameter.  The hall, or great room, is 145ft. long, 65ft. broad, and 65ft. high; including the orchestra it will seat a few over 3,000 persons, while it is said that on more than one occasion 10,000 have found standing room.  Considerable sums have been spent in trying to improve the ventilation and lighting of the Hall, as well as in redecorating occasionally, the medallions of eminent composers and other worthies being introduced in 1876.  For description of Town Hall organ see “Organs.”

Windsor Street Gas Works with its immense gas-holders, retort-houses, its own special canal and railway approaches, covers an area of about twenty-six acres, extending almost from Dartmouth Street to Aston Road.  Though there can be no grand architectural features about such an establishment certain parts of the works are worthy of note, the two principal gas-holders and the new retort-house being among the largest of their kind in the world.  The holders, or gasometers as they are sometimes called, are each 240ft. in diameter, with a depth of 50ft., the telescope arrangement allowing of a rise of 170ft., giving a containing capacity equal to the space required for 6,250,000 cubic feet of gas.  The new retort house is 455ft. long by 210ft. wide, and will produce about nine million cubic feet of gas per day, the furnaces being supplied with coal and cleared of the coke by special machinery of American invention, which is run upon rails backwards and forwards from the line of coal trucks to the furnace mouths.  The quantity of coal used per week is nearly 4,000 tons, most of which is brought from North Staffordshire, and the reserve coal heap is kept as near as convenient to a month’s supply, or 16,000 tons.  The machinery for the purification of the gas, the extracting of the ammoniacal liquor, tar and residuals, which make the manufacture of gas so remunerative, are of the most improved description.

Workhouse.—­The first mention of a local institution thus named occurs in the resolution passed at a public meeting held May 16, 1727, to the effect that it was “highly necessary and convenient that a Public Work House should be erected in or near the town to employ or set to work the poor of Birmingham for their better maintenance as the law directs.”  This resolution seems to have been carried out, as the Workhouse in Lichfield Street (which was then a road leading out of the town) was built in 1733 the first cost being L1,173, but several additions afterwards made brought the building account to about L3,000.  Originally it was built to accommodate 600 poor persons, but in progress of time it was found necessary to house a much larger number, and the Overseers and Guardians were often hard put to for room; which