In 1832, a joint stock company was formed for constructing the General Cemetery at Key Hill--the area of which is about twelve acres. Divided from it by Pitsford Street is the Church of England Cemetery, consecrated in 1848. In 1850 the Catholic Cemetery of St. Joseph was established. By successive orders in Council most of the intra-mural burial grounds were closed, and in the year 1860 the Corporation purchased 105 acres of land at Witton for a Borough Cemetery. Of this area, fifty-three acres are consecrated for use by members of the Established Church; thirty-five are set apart for Nonconformists, two acres and a half have been sold for the use of the Hebrew Community, and the residue is appropriated for the use of Roman Catholics. There are four distinct buildings for the use of the Church of England, Roman Catholics, Nonconformists, and Jews. To this Cemetery the coffins from Scott’s burial ground (72), Cannon Street Chapel (142), and the Old Meeting House (1503), have been removed. CHAPTER VII. ART. =Architecture.=--[By J. A. COSSINS.]--Although anciently possessing a Church, a Priory and a Castle, Birmingham now retains hardly a vestige of the work of the builders of the middle ages. When the old Parish Church of St. Martin was pulled down in 1872 to make way for its very fine successor, the indications of its history, hidden for nearly two centuries by a casing of brickwork, were revealed: traces were found of the work of the 12th and 13th centuries, and considerable remains of what must have been a fine building, mainly of the 14th century. The altar tombs, with effigies of the Lords de Birmingham, were carefully preserved and refixed in the new Church, and are well worthy of examination.[40] A few houses of the framed timber and plaster construction common in the 17th century, remain in Digbeth, and one of a very interesting kind was this year removed from the corner of Bull Street. The earliest in date is the Old Crown House, which is probably of the first half of the 16th century. This was a very interesting specimen of the more massively constructed, but simpler kind, with gables at the extremities of the front, and a central porch of two stories; but the whole of the ground floor was reconstructed about twenty years ago, and it has recently been further disfigured by painting and graining. At Camp Hill there is a very fine half-timbered house in good preservation. This has the date 1601 cut on the porch. Most of the houses burnt by Prince Rupert, when he sacked the town in 1643, were probably of the half-timbered kind, since several still remain.