Warwickshire: The Land of Shakespeare

by Clive Holland

In the latter half of the seventeenth century Birmingham made remarkable strides, and during this period sprang up an increasing demand for many of the articles manufactured there, and the firearm trade soon became a very important and lucrative one. Hampered by no charters or ancient Corporative customs, the town attracted to itself reformers of all kinds, and also skilled workmen, drawn hither by the freedom of manufacture which existed. The iniquitous “Five Mile” and similar Acts had served to drive many wealthy and able men out of corporate towns. In Birmingham these found a “city of refuge,” with fewer restrictions; and with their coming the industrial energy and initiative of the town was greatly and speedily increased. During the eighteenth century these forces were continuously at work, and in the latter half the fullest development was attained and manufactures of all kinds, including iron, hardware, brass, steel, and other articles became wonderfully advanced.

Not a little of this prosperity was undoubtedly directly traceable to the practice which obtained of letting large portions of land at low ground rents and on long leases; thereby giving notable encouragement to the erection of buildings, both residential and commercial, in the centre of the town and in the contiguous suburbs.

Quite early in the century cotton spinning by machinery had been introduced and tried by Lewis Paul and John Wyatt, and somewhere about 1780 a cotton mill was built, but only to prove an unsuccessful experiment, afterwards to be converted into one for metal rolling.

One of the truly great events in the history of Birmingham of this period—nay, of any period—was the foundation by Matthew Boulton of the famous Soho works in 1763. He possessed unbounded enterprise, enthusiasm, and taste, and his original business in Birmingham itself as a “toy–maker,” manufacturing sword–hilts, buckles, brooches, and other ornaments, increased rapidly, and he was compelled to transfer it to larger and better premises. It was to Boulton that James Watt ultimately came in despair at not being able to get his newly invented steam–engine well and carefully made. As events proved, he had come to the right man, and an engine factory, from which the whole world was eventually supplied, was speedily erected. The partnership lasted many years; Boulton, who was a skilled mechanic, was also, above all, a good business man—which Watt was not—and but for him it is more than probable that the inventor would have failed to attain either practical or financial success and recognition.

Of this great workshop of Soho, one of the greatest early factors in Birmingham’s ultimate triumph as a manufacturing and industrial centre, Boulton is reputed to have said, “I supply here what all the world desires to have—Power.” And the founder of Soho, through stormy and even occasionally dangerous times, doggedly persevered, and by great powers of initiative and control secured for himself and for Watt large fortunes, and did much to assist in the general and speedy progress of the town by the invention of machinery and the practical application of the “new power.”

But Boulton, who has left so deep a mark upon Birmingham history of his time, was by no means a mere ingenious manufacturer and good business man. He was a magnetic and personal force, which gathered around him and attracted to Soho from all parts of the world men of genius, scientists, and others. The “Soho circle” or “Lunar Club,” called the latter from the fact that it met only when there was a full moon, on account of the ill–lit and dangerous condition of the streets, was one of the most famous institutions of its kind of the age, and, indeed, probably of any succeeding age.

To his house at one time or another came many men destined to prove famous or who were already so. Dr. Darwin; William Murdock, the inventor of—amongst other things—gas–lighting for houses; Priestly, with his keen brain and recent discoveries; John Baskerville, with his type, paper, and printing, which “astonished the Librarians of Europe”; Dr. Withering, the noted botanist; Joseph Berington, the Roman Catholic historian; and many others who brightened and made notable what may fairly be called “the golden age” of Birmingham’s eighteenth–century progress, and who were the initiators of the advances made in after years.

The great Soho works, in the history of which is, in fact, enshrined much of that relating to the early days of engineering, have passed away; the engine factory having been removed to Smethwick in 1848, after the death of James Watt, the son of the inventor. The site on which Boulton’s house stood is now occupied by streets and terraces of unromantic houses. But the memory of Soho lingers in the name of an open space, and in that of streets and roads.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the desire to modernise Birmingham and to erect buildings with some pretension to architectural beauty seemed to have concerned the inhabitants, and we read, the town “is daily improving in the style of her buildings; there are now architects of the first eminence in the town, and others rapidly rising into notice.”

The progress of Birmingham during the latter half of the nineteenth century has been wonderfully steady and marked.