Bed and breakfast availability
Birmingham b&b, guesthouse and hotel accommodation

Visit Birmingham and the surrounding villages and stay in bed & breakfast accommodation:

Birmingham, West Midlands. Birmingham is Britain's second largest city. Although mentioned in the Domesday Book, it developed slowly until the middle of the 16^th century, when it had already established its reputation as a small industrial town. Even then the Bull Ring was the centre of its many activities. Birmingham's metal industry had already advanced to such a state that it tempered over 16,000 sword blades for Cromwell's forces during the Civil War. Its Roundhead allegiance led in 1643 to a clash of arms in the Bull Ring area with Prince Rupert's forces. He had been ordered to clear a communications route for the Royalists between Oxford and York after the citizens of Birmingham had seized King Charles I's plate and coin while the king was en route to relieve the besieged Banbury Castle. Some 90 houses were destroyed and 400 people made homeless. The town was fined £30,000, about £1 million in terms of today's values.

It was the Industrial Revolution that produced Birmingham's expansion - so rapid that in 1889 Queen Victoria declared it a city. Eleven years later it had its own university and in 1909 gave England its first official Town Planning Act.

The city's most famous church is St Martin's. The most ancient part of the present church dates from the 13^th century. Restoration has left only the interior of the lower part of its tower intact.

The fine 18^th-century Cathedral Church of St Philip with its Baroque tower is notable for its inspired Burne-Jones windows.

A. W. N. Pugin designed the red-brick Roman Catholic cathedral in 14^th-century Gothic style.

Birmingham is one of the few great cities in the world not built upon the banks of a river. In 1769 Samuel Simcock under the direction of James Brindley built a waterway from the coalfields of Wednesbury right into Birmingham's Paradise Street. With the intersections of the Birmingham Canal, the Worcester-Birmingham Canal and the Birmingham-Fazeley Canal being tidied up to form the eastern gateway to the Birmingham Canal Navigation system, Birmingham was left with more miles of waterway than Venice. There are pleasant walks along the canal right in the City Centre.

Suburbs of Birmingham: Bournville, Edgbaston, Longbridge, Perry Barr, Solihull

Nearby cities: Atherstone, Coleshill, Coventry, Halesowen, Henley-in-Arden, Knowle, Wolverhampton

Nearby towns: Bromsgrove, Dudley, Redditch, Royal Leamington Spa, Stourbridge, Sutton Colefield, Tamworth, Walsall, Warwick, West Bromwich

Have you decided to visit Birmingham or the surrounding villages? Please look above for somewhere to stay in:

• a Birmingham bed and breakfast (a Birmingham B&B or Birmingham b and b)
• a Birmingham guesthouse
• a Birmingham hotel (or motel)
• a Birmingham self-catering establishment, or
• other Birmingham accommodation