Birmingham

Birmingham grew from a Midlands market town into a centre of metalworking and manufacture. Its workshops made a remarkable variety of small metal goods, from buttons, buckles and watch chains to tools and fittings. Skilled masters and workers supplied markets far beyond the town, giving Birmingham a reputation for ingenuity and trade.

In the eighteenth century Matthew Boulton established the Soho Manufactory west of the town, bringing hundreds of workers together to produce metal goods for domestic and overseas buyers. His partnership with James Watt also helped develop and manufacture improved steam engines. Birmingham's manufacturers, inventors and thinkers exchanged ideas in circles such as the well-known Birmingham Lunar Society, linking practical industry with the intellectual currents of the eighteenth-century age.