Birmingham Back to Backs

Address 50-54 Hurst Street, Birmingham B5 4TE
Website www.nationaltrust.org.uk/birmingham-back-to-backs

A National Trust property in the Southside district, preserving the last surviving court of back-to-back houses in Birmingham. The houses — arranged around a small courtyard with a shared outdoor toilet — are interpreted across different periods from the 1840s to the 1970s, with each dwelling furnished to represent a specific family and time.

The tours, which are the only way to access the interiors, are popular and book up quickly; advance booking is essential. The exercise is one of the most effective pieces of social history interpretation in Britain — cramped, specific, and genuinely moving. The courtyard setting, with the houses pressing close on all sides, makes the conditions of 19th-century urban working life physically comprehensible in a way that no museum display achieves.

things to do sight museum
A story
Back-to-back houses — two rows sharing a common back wall, with no rear access or garden — were the dominant working-class housing type in Victorian Birmingham. At their peak, around 43,000 of them housed over 200,000 people. By the 1960s most had been demolished as slums; this small court near Hurst Street is the last surviving example in the city.