Old Joe: What's in a name?

​When plans were drawn up for the new University buildings at Edgbaston, architects Sir Aston Webb and Edward Ingress Bell always included a central tower but various designs were considered. 

UC10/i/4/2, Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham

There weren’t enough funds to build the tower until 1905 when Joseph Chamberlain, the University’s first Chancellor and the person responsible for securing most of the donations to establish it, made suggestions about the design.

​The design was approved.

Most of this year was spent on building foundations. 

Christine M Johnson My maternal grandfather Richard Ebborn lived in Bourneville and was a builder by trade. He was involved with the building of Old Joe and our mother, Margaret Johnson, remembered taking sandwiches to him when he was working on the construction.

UA2/B, Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham (1908)

Work on the tower continued. It was built from the inside without scaffolding. This was most likely when the decision was made to name it after Joseph Chamberlain, who suffered a stroke in 1906 and wasn’t able to be as closely involved. It was named the 'Chamberlain Memorial Tower' but became known as 'Joe.'

UA10/i/4, Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham

​Further work had to be carried out after it was discovered that the external brickwork had not been pointed, and rain was getting in. No scaffolding was needed, as workmen were suspended in hanging cages.

My mother, Margaret, did fire watching duties from the top of the clock tower during the Second World War. She always called it Old Joe. I graduated from Birmingham Medical School with my husband, Ian in 1973 and one of my sons, Timothy I.S Wilson (MBChB Medicine, 2004) is an alumnus.

From Jane Wilson (nee Sainsbury) (MBChB Medicine, 1973)

UA10/26 Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham

​When I graduated Joe was definitely not Old Joe then. 

The first major repointing of the tower took place and surviving photographs in the University archives show the tower covered in scaffolding in around May 1957, but with no platforms or lifts.

UB/PH/A/1/2/214, Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham

I was up from 1954 to 1957, and it was definitely Joe at that time.

In my day, Old Joe was still called Joe ...it hadn't reached the status of "old" by then.

It was called Old Joe during my time at university. 

​There were further repairs when the clock was overwound, which caused a cable to snap and the weight which struck the hour fell down the tower. The clock was out of action for a week.

We always called the clock tower Joe, not Old Joe. In the early sixties there was a satirical publication simply called Wall that used to appear on one of the noticeboards in the student union. Late in the summer term of (I think) 1962 there was a trick photo showing Joe apparently relocated to the Lickey Hills. Accompanying text explained that he had been moved there for safety for the duration of the long vacation. The text added that the clock tower still on the Edgbaston campus was in fact a cardboard replica. 

When I graduated the clock tower was just know as Joe. There was nothing “old” about it then!

It was called Old Joe when I arrived in 1960.

I'm pretty sure we called him Old Joe in 1964.

​In the early 1960s, it was always just Joe, so the change must have been after that period. I still think of 'him' as Joe; the new version just grates, I’m afraid.

I never heard Joe called Old and I was also around the campus socially until 1967. 

I can confirm that when I left the University in the summer of 1968, having completed my PGCE, it was still called Joe, which appears to back up your feedback that the name change happened in the late sixties. There was a lot of upheaval in the next couple of years, so I guess the change might have happened in the early seventies. 

Old Joe was already "Old Joe" in my fresher year.

I graduated from the University in July 1968 and at that point the clock tower was always referred to as Joe.

It was always Joe. I'd never heard of "Old Joe" till the name started appearing in your magazine. 

Was definitely still just Joe to us in the 60s. I finally left in 1968. But it's/he's nearly 50 years older now!

In the period when I was at Brum and certainly up until 1970 when my wife graduated, the tower was simply known as Joe. A friend of ours who came up in 1974, knew it as 'Old Joe,' so somewhere between 1970 and 1974, the new name seems to have crept in. It is possible that the 'Old Joe' name was evolving during our last years, say 1968-70, but neither of us knew it by that name. 'Old Joe' seems wrong to us. I don’t know if things have changed, but it was considered very unlucky to walk UNDER Joe when going to the Great Hall for final exams.

The unofficial name was already well-established as Old Joe by the time I arrived. Not once did I ever hear it referred to just as "Joe."

I only ever heard the tower called Joe. Never did I hear the term 'Old Joe' and we civil engineers know all about such erections! 

I never heard anyone call the clock tower anything but Joe. I don’t know when this change happened but from my experience it was definitely not the late 1960s.

I graduated in 1972 and always think of the tower as Joe.

Old Joe was what we called the clock tower.

To my knowledge, the clock tower was just called Joe when I graduated in 1975 - so the name changed after that.

Helen Fisher, says 'evidence in the University Archives suggests that the clock tower was known as “Joe”, certainly until the late 1980s. The bar in the Guild of Students was re-named “Old Joe’s” in 1993 so it might have been around that time that other parts of the University began to call the tower Old Joe rather than Joe.'

A striking new parkland in the centre of the University's historic campus will be completed in 2019.