Page:Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham.djvu/279

Rh of Lime Street Station. Liverpool, is also much larger, being 410ft wide, but it is in two spins. The station has been since greatly enlarged, extending as tar as Hill Street, on which side are the Midland Booking Offices. The tunnels have been partially widened or thrown into open cuttings, additional platforms constructed, and miles of new rails laid down, one whole street (Great Queen Street) being taken bodily into the station for a carriage drive. The station now covers nearly 12 acres, the length of platforms exceeding 1½ miles. The cost of this enlargement was over half-a-million sterling.

As in the case of New Street Station, the introduction of the Great Western Railway caused the removal of a very large number of old buildings, but the monster wooden shed which did duty as the Snow Hill Station for many years was as great a disgrace to the town as ever the old tumbledown structures could have been that were removed to make way for it. This, however, was remedied in 1871, by the erection of the present building, which is extensive and convenient, the platforms having a run of 720 feet, the span of the roof being 92 feet.

Rateable Values.—In 1815 the annual rateable value of property in the borough was totaled at £311,954; in 1824 the amount stood at £389,273, an increase of £77,319 in the ten years; in 1834 the return was £483,774, the increase being £94,501; in 1814 it was £569,686, or an increase of £85,912; in 1854 the returns showed £655,631, the increase, £85,934, being little more than in the previous decennial period. The next ten years were those of the highest prosperity the building trade of this town has ever known, and the rateable values in 1864 went up to £982,384, an increase of £326,763. In 1870 a new assessment was made, which added over £112,000 to the rateable values, the returns for 1874 amounting to £1,254,911, an increase in the ten years of £272,527. In 1877 the returns gave a total of £1,352,554; in 1878 £1,411,060, an increase in the one year of £58,506; but since 1878 the increase has not been so rapid, the average for the next three years being £36,379; and, as will be seen by the following table,

Rainfall.—The mean annual rainfall in the eleven years ending with 1871, in this neighbourhood, was 29.51 inches, in the following eleven years 36.01 inches, the two heaviest years being 1872 with 47.69 inches, and 1882 with 43.06 inches. The depth of rain