Just outside the Jewellery Quarter station in Birmingham is a rather special piece of street furniture, in Victorian cast iron. Known as the 'temple of relief', it is a public toilet which has stood here since 1883 and is Grade-II listed.
The facilities are now closed. A look through the railings which keep out passers-by shows that they were divided into two sections - but these hold urinals not cubicles. It's an interesting choice in an area where many women worked, and suggests that public order rather than users' convenience alone was a significant motivation for placing them here. Like so much excellent and ambitious Victorian cast iron, this is the work of Walter Macfarlane & Co, made in their Saracen Foundry in Glasgow. There were a number of similar conveniences in Birmingham, several of which survive. Indeed, it seems that one is still in use (although another has been lost!).
