GREAT #BEARWOOD & #SMETHWICK EMPLOYERS OF THE PAST & LINKS TO THE #LUNAR SOCIETY AT THE SOHO FOUNDRY Other pieces I have considered for the Bearwood History Blog are on some of the major employers in the Bearwood area like The Midland Red Bus Company, whom my dear departed Mom Dot Bracey worked for in Rutland Road in Bearwood from 1942 until I was born in 1958…. Other major Bearwood employers down the ages include British Pens whose founders the Mitchell Brothers relocated from the Jewellery Quarter to the ‘wide-open spaces’ of Bearwood in Bearwood Road and whose office block is now Bearwood Nursing Home, where my dear Mom Dot passed away 4 years ago. Mitchells and Butlers Brewery was another huge local employer based on Cape Hill and whose cricket club M&B CC I played for for over 20 years. M&B CC had a great local rivalry with the local Smethwick Cricket Club in Broomfield Chance Brother’s Glass whose lighthouse optics: ‘Made in Smethwick’ can be found all over the world was another major local employer. And finally Avery’s Ltd, the industrial weighing machine specialist maker whose former playing field is on Sandon Road in Bearwood and whom my next door neighbour, growing up in Willow Avenue on The Poplars Estate on the Edgbaston, Birmingham side of Bearwood, worked for for many years. Did you know that there is a ‘Weights and Measures Museum’ which can be visited by appointment only at Avery Weightronix. The Avery Museum is run by its Curator Andrew Lound. Andrew recently wrote a book to coincide with the sinking of the SS Titanic’s centenary on a former Avery’s Ltd Managing Director: William Hipkiss, who perished on the SS Titanic in 1912 sailing to America. William Hipkiss was on his way to America aboard the SS Titanic to clinch a huge deal with a US Weighing Machine company which would have made Avery’s the largest industrial weighing machine manufacturer in the world……Sadly he never returned. The current Avery Weightronix site near ‘The Black Patch’ in Smethwick (which is allegedly is where ‘The Most Famous Man in the World:’ one Charlie Chaplin was born!) is the place where Boulton and Watt, those Birmingham Lunar Society men’s Soho Foundry was based. The Soho Foundry was where the steam engines that powered the Industrial Revolution were made.. Parts of the original Soho Foundry building dating from the late eighteenth century still exist as part of the Avery Weightronix industrial site in Smethwick I would like to see the remaining Soho Foundry buildings turned into a ‘Lunar Society Museum’ celebrating these great #Birmingham men’s contribution to the creation of the Modern World with the Industrial Revolution. Other famous members of the Lunar Society were ceramics industry pioneer Josiah Wedgwood, Charles Darwin’s Grandfather Erasmus Darwin of Lichfield, pioneering Physician, the man who first used Digitalis as a heart drug: William Withering and Joseph Priestley, the very first Chemist to isolate the chemical element Oxygen. Joseph Priestley was a fiery Unitarian Minister, also known as ‘Gunpowder Joe’ for his incendiary sermons preaching ‘Revolution’ as he had seen happen in America and France, and who for these views was driven out of Birmingham to exile in America by ‘The Priestley Riots’ of 1791. Also on the Soho Foundry site, now owned by Avery’s are some of the the first dwellings in the world to be lit by gas light. Gas lighting was pioneered by another ‘Lunar Man’ James Murdoch The statue of all 3 of these industrial pioneers: Boulton, Watt and Murdoch can be found ‘gilded in gold’ on Broad Street…..’The Golden Guys’ I often wonder if any of these great ‘Lunar Men’ visited Lightwoods House which was constructed in 1791 when the fame of these great ‘Natural Philosophers’ and thinkers was at its height……..?
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 14:37:01 +0000
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