144, Newhall Street

This is a late 19th-century building, originally part of a larger manufactory, and later converted into a Museum of Science and Industry (now closed). It represents the north-western range of the former Elkington Mason and Co. electro-gilding and plating works, opened in 1838, and altered and extended in the later 19th century, before demolition in the 1960s. Extensions in the 1850s were made alongside the Birmingham and Fazeley canal.

The building has a three-storey, seven-bay frontage range constructed of red brick with ashlar dressings, and a lower, stuccoed link range to one end, now serving as the museum entrance. The ground floor features five windows with semi-circular arches, impost bands, and hoodmoulds. A wide vehicular entrance is located to the right, beneath a metal lintel and above boarded and panelled doors. A moulded storey band is followed by seven first-floor windows, detailed similarly to the ground floor but set between pilasters, with a painted lintel band above the pilaster heads. A dentil cornice and sill band are present above the first-floor windows, which have shallow segmental arched heads. A serpentine string course acts as a hood mould over the window openings and extends across the flanking pilasters, and a moulded cornice sits below a shallow parapet.

The rear workshop ranges contain a wide double arcaded section set behind the frontage, with timber arcade posts supporting tensioned roof trusses with clasped struts. A further rear section features cast iron columns creating a central nave and aisles, supporting wide queen post trusses with principals ending at collar level.

This building is the surviving part of one of the most important and influential 19th-century manufactories in Birmingham, and it forms a group with the Assay Office and the Queens Arms public house. The site is located on the southern edge of the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter, a recognised manufacturing district of international significance.