City of the Dead // Ben Waddington

Wed 10th July // 6pm // 100 mins

Meet: At the Auchinleck statue, opposite Park Regis Hotel160 Broad St, Birmingham B15 1DT

The City of the Dead guided walk takes its name from the former Jewish cemetery at Five Ways: in Hebrew Beth Olom. If it doesn’t sound familiar, that’s perhaps because it is now an overgrown sliver of land between the railway and the canal, punctuated by the occasional grave marker carved with Hebrew script. It is one of several ‘reburied’ graveyards across the city centre that at once tell the story of a rapidly expanding industrial city and decreasing church attendances. Over the course of two miles, this walk visits the partially or completely invisible sites of the city’s former churchyards with tales of disinternments, wandering bones, unofficial garden burials and lost crypts.

• Comfortable footwear and weather-appropriate clothing essential.

• Accessible route.

• City of the Dead first ran during A Matter of Life and Death Festival in 2017.