Birmingham with Friends

A visit by train to the historic Jewellery Quarter

Probably NOT real diamonds in this shop window display in
the Jewellery Quarter, but the shop does sell real diamonds!

Birmingham is an easy journey from my home, and a city I have known since I studied there in the seventies, a city with both an interesting past and a lot of promise for the future. A couple of years ago I visited the Jewellery Quarter solo and after the experience of bringing a group to Birmingham for the Christmas Market last year decided to offer them the chance to visit the Jewellery Quarter with me. I wanted to return there myself to see the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter which I had not had the chance to see last time. Seven people signed up to come with me; three bought their own train tickets and left before the shared evening meal and five of us stayed on until the last train home so that we could eat together as we usually do on these trips.

I was able to get a small discount on train tickets by buying them well in advance, and also bought tickets for two attractions, the Coffin Works and a Canal Tour, so that we could be guaranteed places on them. Participants were then free to choose what other activities they wanted to do for the rest of the day.

We left Stamford on the 08:05 train to Birmingham New Street, dead on time out of Stamford and about right for the rest of the journey. Gathering on the platform at New Street we made our way up and out towards Stephenson Street for the Grand Central tram stop - currently the Birmingham terminus of the Midlands Metro but soon to be a through stop as the extension into Broad Street takes shape. For just £1 each we bought tickets to the Jewellery Quarter stop. This bargain fare is available for journeys within Birmingham, and our stop was the last to which it applies. We climbed the stairs to Vyse Street, the main spine of the quarter, and then went our separate ways, agreeing to meet again at the Chamberlain Clock which we could just see up the street at the main crossroads.

I went to the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, as it happens at the same time as another of my party. There was time to look around the two galleries of self-guided material before the guided tour began. The museum is in two former terraced house which became a jewellery factory and was converted into the museum when the factory closed, and many of the processes of making craft jewellery are demonstrated here - the drop press (which we saw again later at the coffin works), the skill of using a piercing saw, the soldering of delicate components, the polishing. You really have to visit this place for yourself to take in all that is has to show.

The Museum of the
Jewellery Quarter

I was so taken with all that was shown to me that I was shocked when I looked at my watch and saw how little time I would have before the agreed rendezvous at the cross roads, and some of the party would be expecting me in the Rose Villa Tavern for lunch first! So I rapidly replaced my lunch break and had a sandwich in the museum café then ran down to the pub for just a quick pint, in time to gather everyone for the walk down to the Coffin Works.

The tour of the Coffin Works was, of course, similar to the one I had done on my own a couple of years ago so I shall not describe it here, but again the demonstration of how these small Birmingham metalworking factories mass-produced quality goods was fascinating to those who came with me on this trip.

After our tour of the Coffin Works we walked down along the canalside, past several locks, to the waterside by the International Convention Centre where we were due to join the boat for the canal tour. We were a little early and some of us had a very quick walk around the Brindley Place area which is now full of restaurants but which I remember as a semi-derelict old industrial area from my time in Birmingham in the seventies. It is wonderful to see what has been done.

We soon boarded our narrowboat and were taken around some of the canals of the Birmingham Canal Navigation - and past several sites that were still derelict, as well as a lot of new development, too, some of which had changed a lot since my last canal tour. Again, thoroughly recommended if you are in the slightest bit interested in the history or geography of Britain - and the boat has a bar, too!

If you've ever wondered why the mark
of the Birmingham Assay Office is an
anchor ...

After the canal tour one family left to take an earlier train home and the rest of us strolled along the canalside to Gas Street Basin to enjoy a pint at one of the pubs there, then walked back to the City Centre after taking a look at the underside of an aqueduct (Holliday Street) that we had crossed on the boat a short while before.

After the meal at ASK Italian we took the last train home to Stamford, tired and ready for bed on arrival!

I was pressed to arrange another trip this summer. We shall just have to see!

If you live near Stamford, Oakham or Peterborough and are interested in joining me on some of these day trips, please see the "Come with me!" Page.

Pressing and Stamping in the Jewellery Quarter

Sculpture reminding us of Birmingham's history

Well, my planned day out in Birmingham was wonderful, and turned out rather differently from what I first had in mind. Now I shall have to go again to do some of the things I was going to do, for on this trip I struggled to leave the wonderful Jewellery Quarter. I had been there before twice: once looking for jewellery (which I actually finished up buying in the city centre...) and once very briefly for a quick pub lunch while in the city for something else. This time I wanted to see the Pen Museum and while researching its location I stumbled across the Coffin Works, newly open, which I decided really had to see as well. Given that the first off-peak train from Stamford does not get to New Street until after 11:30, lunch would have to be fitted in between the two museums and the day is beginning to look full!

I started the day with the 10:05 departure for Birmingham, nicely on time all the way following a difficult couple of days for Cross Country Trains caused by a derailed freight train near Birmingham. I had my morning coffee on the train - quite a decent coffee I was, pleased to discover. On arrival I picked my way out of the building site which has been New Street station for the last couple of years (not long now before completion), around the roadworks for the tramline extension and visited briefly the Ian Allen book and model shop to look through the range of model cars to add something to the streets of my art deco model railway layout.

Then it was off to the Coffin Works, the former premises of Newman Brothers, manufacturers of coffin furniture for the funeral trade. I knew the midday guided tour was fully booked because they had told me so on Twitter, so I just popped in to see what was available, booked myself on the 14:00 tour and went on the Pen Museum.

It was a short walk through streets being redeveloped to provide new flats where metal-working premises used to be. Like all our cities, this side of Birmingham is being transformed but is bearing witness to its past trades on which the great wealth of this city was built. Finding the entrance to the Pen Museum is quite a challenge: it is in a building where pen nibs were once made and where many other businesses still trade, and it still looks like a factory. I twigged that I had to open the small wicket gate within the vehicular gate to get into the courtyard where the door into the museum was situated, and once inside was amazed at the huge number of pen nibs displayed before me. I declined the immediate offer of a hands-on demonstration of nib-making while I looked around and took in my surroundings. I was greeted by name - the result of having Tweeted that I was on my way there - and after a while allowed myself to be shown how to make a nib. The whole mass-production process cannot be demonstrated because it involves the use of furnaces, but the pressing and cutting operations can all be carried out using Victorian hand presses. As I cut my second nib my "tutor" explained the girls employed on this equipment were expected to turn out 17,000 nib blanks a day ... At one time 75% of the world's writing was done with pens made in Birmingham, and calligraphy pens are still made elsewhere in the city, but the rise of the ballpoint in the mid-twentieth century saw off this industry as a major part of the city's economy.


Through to another room, I was shown the marketing displays of thousands of pens, along with blotters, inkwells, typewriters (these would have been worth an hour on their own) and a huge collection of novelty ballpoints. By this time it became clear that I would have to tear myself away to stand any chance of a meal before my appointment at the Coffin Works, so I said my farewells and made my donation - entry is free but it is well worth giving a donation to such an enthusiastic group of people who keep alive the memory of such a significant industry.

The Stamp Room, the smallest of the hammers
being demonstrated

I went to the pub I had visited for a meal before. It was busy and the one barman was on the telephone, with another customer already waiting, so I went off in search of another, by now being quite thirsty and making my way in the general direction of the Coffin Works. In St Paul's Square I discovered the The Rectory Bar and restaurant and just had time for a pint (very nice) and a sandwich then made my way along the street to my second quirky Jewellery Quarter museum of the day. On paying the £5 admission each visitor "clocks in" just as the workers would have done and we are taken through to the courtyard and the stamp room. Newman Brothers used to make the metal fittings for coffins, a good Brummie industry, and these are stamped out of sheet metal in the stamp room. There was a number of power stamps of various sizes and one of them was used by a professional stamper to demonstrate the process of making a small "RIP" plate for each of us. The working conditions in the plant's heyday would have been difficult: hot, noisy, dangerous, but the jobs were well-paid (they'd have to have been to get anyone to take them). We were then taken to a room where coffin linings and shrouds were made, less typically Brummie but very interesting. The factory had not been much modernised since the 1960s and and not closed until 1999 and had been left as it was on its last day of working, shrouds in the colours of Birmingham City and Aston Villa football clubs still there ...

Shroud for a Villa fan

In the office the phone rang and a long-dead funeral director ordered coffin fittings for his business from the long-dead proprietor of this one. Eery. And off I went, pen nibs and RIP plates in my pocket and dying for a cup of tea!
























The one thing I had promised myself on this trip which did come off was tea and cake at the Centenary Lounge at Moor Street station, a walk across the city centre. This simple little tea and coffee place is in Art Deco style and uses crockery closely based on the Great Western Railway's design for their centenary (and these can be brought from the café or its website for use at home as well!) and they do a very nice cup of tea or coffee and a range of cakes and other snacks. It is also licensed but for me, tea was what was needed, and I had to try the Red Velvet cake, flavoured with vanilla and coloured with beetroot ...

I had intended to visit the ThinkTank museum of science and technology, but by now time had slipped by to the point when it was too late to go in, last entry being at 16:00, so I put that on the "list" for next time and crossed the road to Selfridges where I had a little gift shopping to do. Selfridges is the curvy shop covered in metal discs which dominates any photograph of this end of the city centre. A walk through the market area brought me to the National Trust's Back-to-Back houses which I wanted to photograph, not having done so when we visited them on a holiday in Birmingham a few years ago.

I decided to forego a pint at the Wellington real ale pub which had been on the original schedule in order to fit in dinner at Ask Italian in New Street neatly before the 19:22 departure for Stansted Airport which brought me home in time for an early night, tired out from all that I had seen and done and already feeling the need to return as soon as I can fit in another trip.

Link: My 2011 holiday in Birmingham