This is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart. I quite like those Then and Now comparison photographs that you see in books or on the Twitter or Facebook. The first of the posts in this series was of a council building in Manchester.
Next door to the ICC in Birmingham is a canal and there is a bridge across there from Brindley Place, and it would appear quite often when crossing the bridge I would take a photograph down the canal looking towards the what was the NIA (National Indoor Arena) and is now known as the Utilita Arena Birmingham.
I have over the years taken a photograph from the bridge. This was the view in May 2011 in the early evening.
In the preceding years the NIA had undergone refurbishment and renovation and had had a glass facade added. It was renamed the “Barclaycard Arena” in November 2014 after Barclaycard won the naming rights. This was the view in March 2015 over lunchtime.
Here we are four years later in October 2019 in the morning.
This photograph was taken in March 2020, also in the morning.
I wasn’t in Birmingham in 2021 due to lockdown, but was back in March 2022.
This is the scene in the morning.
This is the scene in the evening.
My most recent visit was in March 2023.
It’s quite surprising how little has changed over the twelve years between the photographs.
It would also not surprise you that I have a similar set of photographs looking the other way…
