GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

GWR Route: North Warwickshire Line

Birmingham Snow Hill Station: gwrbsh64

Another pre-First World War view of the Great Western Station, taken from Colmore Row close to the corner of Cathedral Yard. Every single person in the photograph is wearing some type of headgear, with most wearing a trilby, as it was not considered respectable to be without. The trilby is named after the female heroine of a novel of the same name written by George du Maurier. The novel was serialised in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine and was also made into a stage play. Trilby O’Ferral, the beautiful artist’s model who fell under the spell of Svengali, wore the soft indented felt hat in an 1895 dramatisation. After the turn of the century the Trilby became popular as men rejected the more formal stiff hats that were the vogue of the previous century. The Trilby was very much an American fashion but quickly spread to the rest of the world helped by the medium of film.

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