These appear to have been ill years for the famous old house. Coaching and posting business had decayed, and the commercial growth of Birmingham did not make amends for the loss of the good business done with the nobility and gentry who resorted here in the old days of the road, but now travelled through by train. Devis, accordingly disappears, and the Waddell family, finding difficulties in getting a tenant, put in a manager, Joseph Shore by name. A tenant was at length found in Frank Smith, who had long been a druggist in New Street, but was now ready to try his fortune as hotel-keeper. His rule extended from 1849 to 1867, and was then changed for that of Oldfield, who reigned until 1878, when the old fittings of the hotel were sold and its career brought to a close. The end of the building, was, however, not yet, and the “Hen and Chickens” continued in a modified form, until 1895. Lately it has been pulled down, and a tall, showy “Hen and Chickens Hotel and Restaurant,” in a Victorian Renaissance style and liver-coloured terra-cotta erected on the site; a complete change from the old house, once looked upon as an ornament to New Street, but become at last, owing to the rebuilding carried on all around, altogether out of date and, by contrast, heavy and gloomy. Its severe architecture had been frilled and furbelowed at different times—a portico built out over the pavement in 1830, and a stone attic storey added in more recent years, with a saucy turret at one end—but, however comfortable within, the exterior suggested a bank or some sort of public institution, rather than the warmth and good cheer of an hostelry, and so it was swept away. “The Fowls” as Young Birmingham delighted to call the “Hen and Chickens,” housed of course many notable persons, but not those of the most exclusive kind. The “Royal,” where no coaches came, was in those days the first house. In later days, however, somewhere about 1874, the “Hen and Chickens” lodged the Grand Duke of Hesse, and never ceased to boast the fact. Absurdly much was made of him. He walked on special carpets, dined off plate that had graced no plebeian board, and came and went between rows of servants frozen at a reverential angle of forty-five degrees. The management even went to the length of placing likenesses of his wife on his dressing-table, to make it seem more home-like. Excellent creatures! How touching a belief they cherished in the prevalence of the domestic virtues, even in the august circumstances of a Grand Duke! V Although the “Hen and Chickens” had so early been removed to New Street, Bull Ring and High Street continued to be the chief coaching thoroughfares. There stood the “Swan,” the “Dog” afterwards known as the “Nelson,” the “Castle,” “Albion,” and “St. George’s Tavern.” In Bull Street was the “Saracen’s Head.”