Museum Collection Racking

As you would expect, over the years Birmingham City Council has built up some ‘overspill’ from its museums that it needed to put into storage.  However, with the closure of the Birmingham Museum of Science and Industry in 1997, considerable storage space was required for a large proportion of its exhibits as only some made the transfer to the Science Museum at ThinkTank: the 1.5 hectare warehousing centre on Dollman Street, Nechells, serves this purpose.

Whilst I opine the loss of the Museum of Science and Industry elsewhere on this site it is of some comfort to know that the exhibits once displayed there are at least in good order and stored as opposed to having been sold off. However, it is not quite apparent what they are being stored for as the Centre isn’t open to the public – only on two days per year – and the Council have made it abundantly clear that a dedicated industrial museum is not a worthwhile use of taxpayer’s money: although I’m sure most of us could think of far less worthy causes that do well from the Council’s coffers!

That said, the Museum Collections Centre contains some real gems and for anyone who remembers the old Museum of Science and Industry, a good deal of memories will be jogged whilst walking around it’s rackings and viewing its vehicles collection – my particular favourite being an electric refuse truck from the 1960s (see below) which, for some reason, caught my imagination as a small boy.

It also needs to be borne in mind that whilst the overwhelming majority of items stored there are from the old Museum of Science and Industry, there are exhibits from the Art Gallery and Natural History Museum here too: a significant porcelain collection is housed here – some items dating back several thousand years BC – along with a shoe collection, a toy collection and various other items and artifacts from various historical periods.

Whilst the Centre is a fascinating Aladdin’s Cave of exhibits and industrial and scientific history, it does beggar the question as to why it’s all locked away out of the public’s view: surely its content belongs to the people of Birmingham and we pay for the Centre’s upkeep and staffing: wouldn’t it be better to make it publicly accessible – even charge a small fee for entry (as opposed to a large one at ThinkTank) – and let people enjoy what’s there? Come on Birmingham City Council, I know you seem to actively pursue a policy of erasing and hiding all traces of Birmingham’s industrial past but surely it’s what made Birmingham what it is and should be celebrated and promoted as a significant part of our regional heritage, not locked away in a warehouse!

Birmingham Assay Office - Newhall Street

Opening in 1773 following the Hallmarking Act, the purpose of the Birmingham Assay Office was to validate the quality of the previous metal used and to hallmark the item to attest to this measure having been validated (the hallmark indicating the maker and date of item and the anchor symbol indicating the Birmingham Assay Office).  With a flourishing ‘Jewellery Quarter’ at Hockley, the Assay Office was destined to be an increasingly busy place and, interestingly, its first customer was Matthew Boulton who had tirelessly campaigned for the opening of a local Assay Office due to the restrictive practice of having to send all products to London to be assayed.

In 1877, the Assay Office moved to its current location on the corner of Newhall Street and Charlotte Street – opposite the Elkington’s Silver Electroplating Works that was later to become home to the Birmingham Museum of Science and Industry.

An enduring success story in the history of Birmingham, the Assay Office in Newhall Street is today the largest in the World handling in excess of 12 million precious metal items a year!

Birmingham Museum of Science and Industry site

One of  the single greatest losses to the heritage of Birmingham occurred in 1997 when Birmingham City Council closed the Museum of Science and Industry which occupied part of the former Elkington Silver Electroplating Works in Newhall Street and had operated since 1951.

The Museum was a fascinating Aladdin’s Cave of industrial heritage exhibits crammed into a very unsuitable building for such a function – lots of tiny rooms on different levels – which made it all the more exciting to explore! Immediately inside the entrance you were presented with a rather grotty ‘cafe’ area along the right-hand side and then, to the left, 6235 LMS Coronation Class 4-6-2 loco ‘City of Birmingham’ which used to shuffle electronically along backwards and forwards a yard or so on the hour:  sounds naff but was very impressive as a child – particularly the scale of the engine.

As you moved along the walkway past the loco and cafe you had an Otis lift gear display infront of you – when you pressed a button the machinery whirred into action and the many hours of laughter I had as a child at the phrase ‘governor balls’ you wouldn’t begin to imagine! To the left of that I seem to recall an old open-sided Birmingham City Council dustbin lorry and an old steam engine named ‘Secundus’ that I think had blown it’s boiler working in a quarry or some such in Dorset . . . the ‘Birmingham’ connection being it was built by Bellis & Seekings in 1874.

To the end of the room and through a small doorway and you were into a more labyrinthine part of the museum with vintage cars, aircraft parts, the last tram to run in Birmingham along with sound (when a button was pressed, of course) and – one of my personal favourites – ten to 15 radios dating back some 100 years or so with a little control panel.  A tune would be playing and by pressing a series of buttons, the tune would switch to playing through the corresponding radio so you could hear the differences in sound quality over the years . . . an excellent piece of kit.

I must have spent a day or two every holiday mooching around inside the Museum and knew every exhibit inside out (the sands of time, however, have gradually eroded this knowledge, sadly).

As mentioned elsewhere, I left Birmingham for many years and when I returned at the close of the 1990s the Museum of Science and Industry was no more – closed for good and a new pretender to the name was emerging on Curzon Street to be opened as ThinkTank in 2001, part of the Millennium Point development.  Sadly, whilst a few of the exhibits had made the move, many were simply moved to Birmingham City Council’s Museum Collections Centre in Dollman Street which opens sporadically to small public viewings.

As if this wasn’t a poor enough state of affairs, with the Museum now vacated from the Elkington building the Council deemed the structure “surplus to requirements and [it] was marketed for disposal” whereby the Council began hawking the site around to potential developers.

St Bernanrd’s Property took the project on in 2002 and the accepted plans are now to provide “mixed use development including leisure and commercial uses and 234 apartments” including “the retention and sensitive refurbishment of a number of Listed Buildings on the site, some of which formed part of the former Elkington Plating Works”. So, we lose a fascinating record of the City’s industrial heritage for more ‘mixed use’ nonsense – many similar projects are standing half empty around the City already – but ’some’ of the former works will be saved . . . surely more of it would have been had they left it as it was?  Furthermore, take a look at the photographs below to see how many buildings have been retained at the site during the preparation for the Newhall Square development.  Whilst the frontage buildings shown above are retained, where the gates now stand a large glass-fronted section housing the City of Birmingham loco lay which, along with the majority of the buildings, is no more -  the majority of the Museum structures having now gone.

The demolition and clearance workd at the Museum site began in October 2006 and is now virtually complete as can be seen below.  ThinkTank has been up and running for 8 years now as a fee-paying sideshow for those with an attention span of a goldfish containing ‘interactive exhibits’ of the kind of which my 6 year-old would tire within seconds . . . hardly a replacement in any way, shape or form for the splendid Museum of Science and Industry.  Furthermore, it is a ‘Science’ museum . . . no mention of ‘Industry’ so hardly a replacement for what has been lost and at £9.00 a throw to get in hardly serving the people of Birmingham in quite the manner they once were!

The complete lack of Birmingham City Council’s investment and interest in promoting a knowledge of the City’s past has been highlighted elsewhere but for the City of a Thousand Trades to not have a dedicated – and adult – Museum of Science and Industry is something of an embarrassment.  Jon Price at Made in Birmingham has fought a tireless campaign to get the Council to reconsider its options regarding a museum and the fact that a large proportion of the old museum’s exhibits are not available for viewing by us, the public, who surely own them as Council Tax payers but to no avail: pop over to Jon’s site for more details.

Birmingham City Council – you should be ashamed of yourselves!

ThinkTank - Eastside, City Centre/Aston 26/05/06

The Eastside development is a phased regeneration project aimed at revitalising a 420 acre tract of land immediately to the East of the City Centre, largely encompassed within a triangle formed by Curzon Street, Lawley Middleway and Jennens Lane at a cost of £6bn.

One of the first signs of the development, Millennium Point on Curzon Street which opened in 2001 and houses the Birmingham Science Museum amongst its ‘ThinkTank’ facilities, can be seen above. What is also interesting here is the great contrast between the old and the new: to the left of the shot is a derelict workshop on Grosvenor Street which sits quite uncomfortably next to the ’space age’ stylings of Millennium Point.

The proposed redevelopment encompasses the old favourites of offices, bars & restaurants, open spaces/parks and ‘innovative centres of technology’, city apartments etc . . . Now, not wanting to appear at all curmudgeonly or standing in the way of ‘progress’ but there does seem to be an awful lot of the above list already in Birmingham, a fair proportion of it vacant, and the laudible outpourings of the Council that they are developing an ‘area of inclusion for local people . . . benefiting the local community etc . . .’ can be viewed with a more sceptical eye: the extent to which Brindley Place apartments, the shops of the Mailbox, and the million and one bars on Broad Street have benefited the people of Ladywood and its surroundings being a moot point.

However, that aside, the area once provided for a fascinating walk as it was an industrial ghost town with all the roads lined with a variety of Victorian industrial premises (and some more recent), which had been the subject of a mass compulsory purchase order and were all ‘Acquired by Advantage West Midlands’ – the Regional Development Agency.  To attest to that point I have posted a selection of photographs of the area below taken in 2006.

Cadbury - Bournville, viewed from the Cross City Line

Amongst the doom and gloom that is usually associated with Birmingham’s ever-shrinking industry it is nice, for once, to report a success story and there are currently none better than that of Cadburys.

Beginning in a small shop in Bull Street in 1824, John Cadbury’s fledgling business began to rapidly expand and by 1847 brother Benjamin had been taken into partnership and larger premises sough in Bridge Street. In 1860 the business was passed to John’s sons, Richard and George, who built the business and sought new premises, settling on a greenfield site near Stirchley in South Birmingham at which they set about building a new factory in 1879.

The combination of a healthy rural environment, the Midland Railway, the Worcester & Birmingham Canal and fresh water coupled with a large undeveloped plot of land, made this the ideal spot for the rapidly expanding business. In addition to the factory, the Cadbury’s were philanthropic Quakers who believed in caring for their workers – although more cynical revisionist histories suggest other reasons for their endeavour – and constructed the 330+ acre village of Bournville around the works with large, good quality housing with gardens, swimming baths, a library and a whole host of other facilities (and educational and health-related schemes), many of which remain today!

The works developed its own internal railway, with locos, that linked with the Midland Railway’s Birmingham West Suburban Line and also crossed the line to reach their Waterside Wharf on the Worcester & Birmingham canal. Prior to the railway connection, horse-drawn carts had to traipse a mile and a half away to Lifford transshipment wharf near Kings Norton to avail the company of the rail network.

Like many of the region’s companies, Cadbury’s has been involved in numerous mergers and acquisitions of other companies. The difference appears to be the business acumen displayed through the majority of business dealings: the absorption of Typhoo, Frys, Schweppes, Trebor-Bassett and many, many more over the years has served to strengthen the company and enable movement into other markets, most of which they have exploited successfully.

At last, a Birmingham success story! They have traded longer than most of the companies in the region and have outlasted many of them – it was ‘alleged’ that a desperate call from Rover’s Personnel Dept several weeks before their ’sudden’ closure asking if they had vacancies for ‘a considerable number’ of electrician apprentices, however, fell on deaf ears!

Alstom (Metropolitan-Cammell Ltd) - Leigh Road, Washwood Heath

Opened under the Midland Railway Carriage and Wagon Company, the works at Washwood Heath operated hand in hand with, and eventually absorbed the work of, Joseph Wright & Sons works at Saltley.

Developing stock for the railways of the Empire and the flourishing rail industry at home, the company enjoyed great susccess and in 1929 was bought by Vickers Ltd and Cammell Laird and Co (shipbuilders) and became Metropolitan-Cammell Ltd. Further success ensued with the giant backing of the two parent companies leading to the landing of successive lucrative contracts and, in 1962, the works absorbing the manufacturing work from the Saltley works which had closed.

However, as with any industrial success story – including making trains for railways in the UK and overseas, including the London Underground, Hong Kong Metro, the Channel Tunnel and locomotives for Malaysia’s Keretapi Tanah Melayu – eventually a period of decline ensued, due in part to cheaper competition from abroad and later the restructuring of British Rail into privatised franchises.

In 1989 the company was sold to GEC Alsthom (who later dropped the ‘h’, becoming Alstom) and in 1998 the Alstom Group emerged as owners.  The now French-owned company initially continued working the plant and landed contracts to build the Pendolino fleet for Virgin Trains – a contract which proved to be the company’s last UK production. A £100 contract was won for London Underground’s Jubilee Line which was swiftly followed by an announcement from Alstom that the contract could be fulfilled more cheaply abroad which was itself followed by the seemingly overnight withdrawal of Alstom from train production across the UK with, of course, the swift asset stripping of machinery from the plant.

By the close of 2004, the last Pendolino had rolled off the production line and, despite admirable attempts by the trade union Amicus, along with the workers, to pressurise Alstom to reconsider, the works closed after 158 years of production with the loss of 1900 jobs.

Birmingham Battery & Metal Co - Selly Oak

The Birmingham Battery & Metal Co opened a new rolling mill in Selly Oak in 1871 to equip them for their new venture into rolling and tube production. Incidentally, to dispel a popularly held local misconception, the company did not make ‘batteries’: ‘battery’ was a term for hammering, or battering, ingots of metal into various shapes for the production of various products – pans and kettles, for example.

The Selly Oak site rapidly grew and added a copper refinery, tube mill, rolling mill and canal wharf on the Dudley Canal (now drained and filled) at its junction with the Worcester & Birmingham Canal. The firm enjoyed a boom period supplying railways with stay rods for boilers, amongst other products, and expanding to the point where a coal-fired gas production plant was built to power the machinery and its own power station!

However, as did many of the heavy industries, the company fell into difficulty during the 1980s and closed down leaving a large site prime for redevelopment but heavily contaminated. In its heyday the site was considerable but proposals for residential development were rebuffed due to the land contamination and instead, part of the site was turned into Battery Park – a retail development – and a large Sainsbury’s store.

Futher development of the area is underway with the future of the remaining factory structure looking seriously grim if the following consultation document is anything to go by:

It would appear that what is now proposed is a renavigating of the Dudley Canal – which had been drained and filled, remnants of which can be clearly seen on Harborne Lane – and the construction of a 54-acre retail and residential site and a new, bigger Sainsburys on the site of the remaining Company building.

I have to say I think the remaining Company office building is fantastic and defintiely aesthetically pleasing in a rather gothic manner and I, for one, will be sorry to see it go if it does get swept away:  the road building and bypass scheme – although well-advanced – has not brought about the demise of the building on Bristol Road as yet but I feel it’s more a matter of ‘when’ than an ‘if’.

HP Sauce factory, Aston

Another example of a British institution being sold to a company from abroad and later to be closed is the stalwart of the British breakfast table, HP Sauce of Aston.

The recipe for HP brown sauce was bought from its creator, Nottingham grocer Frederick Gibson Garton, by Edward Samson Moore, owner of the Midland Vinegar Company in 1903. The plant originally brewed its own vinegar for production of the sauce and when the A38 Aston Expressway bisected the site, a pipe was mounted over the Expressway to pump vinegar from one side of the works (The Top Yard – which has long-since closed) to the other!

Danone bought HP Foods for £199 million from industrial conglomerate Hanson in 1988 but, for various reasons connected with other areas of the Danone empire, announced in March 2005 that it was seeking a buyer. In stepped Heinz with a £470 succesful bid who then announced, a year later, their plan to shift production to Elste in the Netherlands! For once, a flourishing business with annual after-tax profits of around £31 million faced closure with the loss of around 120 of its existing workforce (which had already been gradually eroded over the previous few years).

Sadly, the production shifted from the site with closure coming in March 2007, closely followed by complete demolition of the factory itself:  yet another industrial staple of Birmingham – and landmark, particularly the tower as seen in the photograph above – gone from the City for good.

Dismantling the overhead conveyor system 05/08/06

One of the more shocking elements of the demise of Longbridge, social and econimic consequences aside, was the changes it bought about to the landscape of the southern tip of Birmingham.  Views that I had known all my life had suddenly, and drastically, changed.  For visitors to the City approaching from the South along the A38, one of the most striking changes was the removal of the overhead conveyor system that had provided a ‘gateway to Birmingham’ from a southern approach for 30 years.

Whilst it can be argued that industrial landscapes are an eyesore etc . . . they are very much, or at least were, integral to the landscape of Birmingham and its surrounding regions so to lose 400 acres of such industrial heritage in one fell swoop has had a considerable impact on the region.

Below are a series of images covering largely the demolition of the West Works and the removal of the overhead conveyor bridge (which was no mean feat) during the period 04/08/06 – 04/11/06: