The Elkington Silver Electroplating Works was a building on

Newhall Street Newhall Street is a street located in Birmingham, England. Newhall Street stretches from Colmore Row in the city centre by St Phillip's Cathedral in a north-westerly direction towards the Jewellery Quarter. Originally the road was the driv ...

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It later housed the Birmingham science museum Museum of Science and Industry until the creation of Thinktank. Standing opposite the

Birmingham Assay Office The Birmingham Assay Office, one of the four assay offices in the United Kingdom, is located in the Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham. The development of a silver industry in 18th century Birmingham was hampered by the legal requirement that item ...

, the original 19th century silver electroplating factory of George Elkington, built in 1838, once occupied a much longer, grandiose building on Newhall Street which was largely demolished in the mid-1960s. The works had many workshops and warehouses along and over the

Birmingham and Fazeley Canal The Birmingham and Fazeley Canal is a canal of the Birmingham Canal Navigations in the West Midlands of England. Its purpose was to provide a link between the Coventry Canal and Birmingham and thereby connect Birmingham to London via the Oxfor ...

and the now filled-in Whitmore's Arm (or Miss Colmore's Arm) canal, which ran through the site. In the early 1850s there was a

steam-powered A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be tr ...

electric generator with 64 permanent magnets arranged in a circle and a rotating

wrought iron Wrought iron is an iron alloy with a very low carbon content (less than 0.08%) in contrast to that of cast iron (2.1% to 4%). It is a semi-fused mass of iron with fibrous slag inclusions (up to 2% by weight), which give it a wood-like "grain" ...

armature. The electroplating process involved solutions of cyanide of silver and potassium cyanide. The building carries two blue plaques on its wall, one to George Elkington, and another to his employee

Alexander Parkes Alexander Parkes (29 December 1813 29 June 1890) was a metallurgist and inventor from Birmingham, England. He created Parkesine, the first man-made plastic. Biography The son of a manufacturer of brass locks, Parkes was apprenticed to Messenge ...

who is credited with inventing the first

plastic Plastics are a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic materials that use polymers as a main ingredient. Their plasticity makes it possible for plastics to be moulded, extruded or pressed into solid objects of various shapes. This adaptab ...

Museum of Science and Industry

The site hosted the science museum of

Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery (BM&AG) is a museum and art gallery in Birmingham, England. It has a collection of international importance covering fine art, ceramics, metalwork, jewellery, natural history, archaeology, ethnography, local h ...

from 1951 until its closure in 1997. Many exhibits were then moved to Thinktank, which later opened as an entrance-fee-based exhibition in Millennium Point in Eastside, in September 2001. Among the famous exhibits to move in the relocation was the 1797 Smethwick Engine, produced by famous local industrialist James Watt. It had originally been located in the town of Smethwick, before being relocated to the Birmingham Canal Navigation Workshops at Ocker HillThis gave the engine its alternative name of the 'Ocker Hill Engine' (actually some 10 miles away to a town named

Tipton Tipton is an industrial town in the West Midlands in England with a population of around 38,777 at the 2011 UK Census. It is located northwest of Birmingham. Tipton was once one of the most heavily industrialised towns in the Black Country, w ...

) in 1897. However, it came to the museum in 1959 on the closure of the workshops. Also moved to the new museum was Elkington's own

Woolrich Electrical Generator The Woolrich Electrical Generator, now in Thinktank, Birmingham Science Museum, England, is the earliest electrical generator used in an industrial process. Built in February 1844 at the Magneto Works of Thomas Prime and Son, Birmingham, to a de ...

, made in 1844, the earliest electrical generator used in an industrial process.Birmingham Museums trust catalogue, accession number: 1889S00044

Future development

Birmingham City Council Birmingham City Council is the local government body responsible for the governance of the City of Birmingham in England, which has been a metropolitan district since 1974. It is the most populated local council area in the United Kingdom ...

put up the site, which runs along Newhall Street and Charlotte Street, and adjoins the

, for long lease and redevelopment. The development was awarded to St Bernard's Property in 2002. Planning permission was granted in 2006 for the Jewellery Box - a mixed use leisure, commercial and residential development with 234 apartments. The grade II listed ornate

terracotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...

Queen's Arms pub adjoins the site, which is within the

Jewellery Quarter The Jewellery Quarter is an area of central Birmingham, UK, in the north-western area of Birmingham City Centre, with a population of around 19,000 people in a area. The Jewellery Quarter is Europe's largest concentration of businesses invol ...

Conservation Area.

Notes

References

Sources

*''The Birmingham Jewellery Quarter - An Architectural Survey of the Manufactories'', John Cattell, Sheila Ely, Barry Jones, English Heritage, 2002,
Birmingham City Council on the former Science MuseumBCC Redevelopment Brief 2002, PDF 983Kb

External links

Birmingham City Council - Conservation Areas (Jewellery Quarter)Campaign to get an industrial museum for Birmingham
{{Coord, 52, 29, 0.92, N, 1, 54, 22.79, W, type:landmark, display=title Buildings and structures in Birmingham, West Midlands Defunct museums in England Museums in Birmingham, West Midlands Demolished manufacturing buildings and structures Demolished buildings and structures in the West Midlands (county) Industry in Birmingham, West Midlands