Assay Office

Assay Office, Newhall Street, Birmingham

A red brick building with ashlar gritstone and polished granite dressings, built in 1878 and designed by architect Andrew Phipson. It was extended in 1885, with further alterations and enlargements in 1890, 1899, 1907 and 1914 to designs by architect Ewen Harper, and again altered in 1974. The building is in a restrained Italianate style.

The structure follows an evolved, irregular U-plan resulting from two main building phases on two street frontages. The first phase comprised offices and workshops in an L-shaped configuration, with an added frontage range and rear workshops extending westwards that formed a semi-enclosed rear yard.

The main office range faces Newhall Street with a symmetrical five-bay frontage of three storeys above a basement. A central entrance porch features a balustraded parapet and polished granite Tuscan columns rising from shallow plinth walls. The doorway is of ashlar sandstone with pilasters flanking a moulded semi-circular arch-headed opening with half-glazed double doors. Tall flanking windows sit in moulded brick surrounds with shallow segmental arched heads. Shallow pilasters with Corinthian capitals at the original cornice level define the bays. A wide ashlar storey band and moulded sill band to first floor windows have recessed brick panels set below semi-circular arch-headed window openings. Tripartite sash windows with intermediate slender granite columns, their foliated capitals supporting moulded lintels, rise to brick arched heads. Above the entrance porch, flanking Corinthian columns support a wide segmental pediment surmounted by an entablature bearing the Royal Coat of Arms. The 1914 added storey contains pairs of ashlar-framed square windows below rectangular advanced brickwork panels flanking the coat of arms, replacing the original balustraded parapet with urn finials to piers. The thirteen-bay return elevation to Charlotte Street originally had storeyed bays in its first four bays, with remaining bays single-storeyed and successively enlarged and altered.

The 1885 extension originally comprised three storeys with a later attic storey with hipped roof set behind a balustraded parapet. Its symmetrical elevation features a slightly advanced central bay with pedimented surround carried on deep ashlar brackets. A semi-circular arch-headed opening with flanking pilasters, originally a doorway but now a window, sits flanked by former windows now converted to doorways with shallow arched heads and moulded brick surrounds with pivot overlights. Upper floor windows are similarly detailed with sills within a sill band and now fitted with twentieth-century frames. A moulded cornice sits below a shallow balustraded parapet with urn finials to piers.

Interiors of the original Newhall Street range include a tiled entrance lobby and main stair hall with dado tilework and a dog-leg cantilevered stone stair featuring decorative cast-iron balusters and a moulded curved handrail. First floor rooms house the Boulton Collection of silver and the Assay Office library, which contains wall panelling, a hearth surround and overmantle flanked by fixed shelving. Adjacent to the library lies the Dining Room of the Assay Office Guardians, featuring a moulded plaster ceiling, bolection-moulded architraves and a decorative carved overmantle.

The Birmingham Assay Office was established in 1773 following a Parliamentary Bill promoted by Matthew Boulton and supported by Lord Dartmouth and others of local nobility, gentry and industrialists in Sheffield engaged in silver and plated wares manufacture. The first Assay Office occupied rented premises at the Kings Head on New Street before relocating to Little Cannon Street, where it remained until opening at the Newhall Street site in 1878. These premises contained meeting and waiting rooms, offices, workshops and a refinery, later extended to provide an enlarged weighing room and additional facilities for scraping and marking. As of 2001, it was the most heavily-used assay office in Britain, handling over twelve million items of gold and silver annually. The Birmingham Assay Office represents a rare example of a specialist historic building type found in very few English locations that continues to fulfil its original function of validating and certifying the quality of jewellery and precious metal products made in Birmingham's specialist manufacturing district, the Jewellery Quarter, now recognised as being of international significance.