History
The first Vicar, William Toy Young, a scholar and musician, was succeeded by his Curate of twenty years Rann Kennedy. He was classics master at King Edward's School, and the father of Benjamin Hall Kennedy, the great headmaster of Shrewsbury and author of the Latin primer.
From the 1830s the social pattern changed. The back to back artisan house began to accommodate the increasing number of craftsmen in the growing jewellery and in the small metalware businesses The new pre-occupation of the Church and its clergy was with poverty, illiteracy and education. P.H.C. Latimer, (who was High Church) and in the eighteen sixties and eighteen seventies R. B. Burges (who was Evangelical), did quite fantastic work in meeting the new social need. Burges and his four curates and two scripture readers, visited all the 16000 people in the parish four times a year- - and kept a record of it all! They had reading and writing classes for 2000 people a week - 120 classes a week - and 2000 children, young people and adults in Sunday Schools and Bible Classes on Sundays. The faithful well-to-do became more and more a source of funds, to help in the good work rather than the object of the good work.
This was the time when the church schools of the parish came into being. Burges made the schools at Spencer Street (closed in 1968) and Camden Drive his main concern. The other great incumbency was that of W. H. Smith - whose thirty-three years are still remembered. He was a huge eccentric, with a capacity for knocking down men of whose behavior he disapproved! He had a different world to cope with. In his time the "Jewellers' Church" gradually ceased to be the home of the manufacturers and merchants. They had by then all moved out to Edgbaston and Moseley, and, while they still retained some affection and loyalty for the place, they saw it chiefly as a place from which "good work was done" amongst their workers. It gradually became a shabby ruin and a typical down-town church, a situation sadly confirmed after local bombing during the 1939-45 war.
In one respect the wheel of change has come full circle - because of one thing which did not change, the superb acoustics of St Paul's Church. Music has been performed at St Paul's from the very beginning. We maintain the tradition and more and more people are discovering the joy of making music in a building which encourages them.
The Parochial Church Council completed an extensive programme of restoration between 1985 and 1994 with the assistance of the Birmingham City Council, Duchy of Cornwall, English Heritage, local business and other benefactors. The Coat of Arms erected on the West Wall in 1996 represents that of George III in whose reign St Paul's Church was built. The Millennium Window was added in 2000 and a peal of ten bells was installed in 2005.