John-

I did run across a reference to Brummagem years ago in some unrelated music research :

The current confusion and sadness experienced by those who return home looking for their old neighborhood is clearly anticipated in this 19th century broadside from Birmingham collected by Roy Palmer:

"For the past ten years and more (1970's), not only visitors, but inhabitants have been astonished and perplexed by continual changes in the topography of Birmingham caused by re-building carried out on a vast scale. The situation was apparently similar in 1828 when music-hall entertainer, James Dobbs, wrote this song to the tune of Duncan Grey. It was popular for several years, being frequently reprinted on broadsides and sung, we are told, by passengers riding on the tops of stage coaches...The old church mentioned is St. Martin's; the moat around the residence of the ancient lords of Birmingham was filled up to form Smithfield Market Place; the Dungil or Dungeon was the town prison, originally in Peck Lane, and later moved to Moor Street; jack bannils are sticklebacks (fish)."


Words by James Dobbs, 1828,
Recorded by Richard Hamilton on The Wide Midlands
Topic Records 12 TS 210

I Can't Find Brummagem


Full twenty years and more have passed
Since I left Brummagem,
But I set out for home at last
To good old Brummagem;
But every place is altered so,
There's hardly a single place I know,
Which fills my heart with grief and woe,
For I can't find Brummagem.

As I was walking down our street
As used to be in Brummagem,
I knowed nobody as I did meet;
They've changed their faces in Brummagem;
Poor old Spiceal Street's half gone
And the poor old Church stands all alone;
And poor old I stands here to groan
For I can't fin Brummagem.

Amongst the changes we have got
In good old Brummagem,
They've made a market on the moat
To sell the pigs in Brummagem;
But that has brought us more ill-luck;
They're filled up poor old Pudding Brook,
Where in the mud I've often stuck,
Catching jack-bannils in Brummagem.

But what's more melancholy still
For poor old Brummagem,
They've taken away old Newhall Hill,
From poor old Brummagem;
At Easter time, girls fair and brown
Used to come roly-poly down,
And show their legs to half the town,
Oh, the good sights of Brummagem.

Now, down Peck Lane I walked along
To find out Brummagem;
There was the dungeon down and gone,
What, no rogues in Brummagem?
They've taken it to a street called Moor,
A sign that rogues have got no fewer;
The rogues won't like to go there, I'm sure,
While Peck Lane's in Brummagem.

I remember one John Growse,
A bucket-maker in Brummagem,
He build himself a country house
To be out of the smoke of Brummagem,
But though John's country house stands still
The town itself has walked up the hill;
Now he lives besides a smoky mill
In the middle of the streets of Brummagem.

Among the changes that abound,
In good old Brummagem,
May trade and happiness be found,
In good old Brummagem;
And though no Newhall Hill we've got,
Nor pudding Brook, nor any moat,
May we always have enough to boil the pot,
In good old Brummagem.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble