144, Newhall Street

BIRMINGHAM

997/0/10272 NEWHALL STREET 29-APR-04 144

II Formerly part of extensive manufactory, converted to Museum of Science and Industry (now closed ) Late C19 with late C20 alterations. Red brick with ashlar dressings with pitched roof concealed by parapet. 2 bays with stucco finish. PLAN: Tall frontage with former manufacturing premises to the rear, the north-western range of the former manufactory. EXTERIOR: 3 storey 7- bay frontage range with lower fragment of stuccoed link range to left-hand end, now museum entrance. 3 storey part with 5 semi-circular arch-headed windows to ground floor with impost band and hoodmoulds rising from it. Further right, wide vehicular entrance below metal lintel with tall boarded and panelled doors. Moulded storey band, then 7 first floor windows detailed as those below, but set between pilasters, the heads of which form part of a painted lintel band. Above this, dentilled cornice and sill band to upper floor window openings with shallow segmental arched heads. Serpentine string course forms hood mould to openings and is carried across flanking pilasters. Moulded cornice below shallow parapet. INTERIOR : Rear workshop ranges with wide double arcaded part set behind frontage range, timber arcade posts carrying tensioned roof trusses with clasped struts. Rear part with cast iron columns forming central nave and aisles and supporting wide queen post trusses with principals ending at collar level. HISTORY: This building is the surviving element of the electro-gilding and plating works of Elkington Mason and Co., opened in 1838, altered and extended in the later C19, and then largely demolished in the 1960's. Extensions in the 1850's were executed on the side of the Birmingham and Fazeley canal to the south-east, which sub-divided the extensive works site. Forms a group with the Assay Office (q.v.) and the Queens Arms public house (q.v.) The surviving part of one of the most important and influential C19 manufactories in Birmingham, which forms part of a notable group of historic buildings, including the Birmingham Assay Office, on the southern edge of the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter, now recognised as a manufacturing district of international significance.