Context 159 - May 2019

C O N T E X T 1 5 9 : M A Y 2 0 1 9 17 Building services NICK HILL Authenticity? Leave it alone A conserve-as-found approach, even for the service installations, has retained the atmosphere of one of the most complete surviving historic factories in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. The JWEvans silverware factory in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, managed by a single fam- ily from its foundation in 1881 to its closure in 2008, represents a unique and remarkably complete survival. The factory was the subject of a major rescue project carried out by English Heritage in 2008–11, and is now an English Heritage property open to the public. The extraordinary atmosphere of the interior encouraged a radical approach to be taken to the rescue work, never attempted on this scale previ- ously in the UK. Throughout the programme of major repairs, the aim was that the whole of the contents of the building should be preserved in situ and untouched. The ‘conserve as found’ approach was taken here to its logical extreme, and applied even to the service installations. Established in 1881, JW Evans is one of the most complete surviving historic factories in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter. Behind the terraced house frontage, the workshops retain their original drop-stamps and fly-presses, and are packed with thousands of dies for the manufacture of silverware as well as the whole of the working equipment, stock and records of the business. To walk into the factory is to step into a lost industrial world. The buildings themselves are unexceptional, built of brick and slate, with a typical early- 19th-century terrace row at the front, and long ranges of late 19th-century workshops behind. Inside, the reason for the Grade II* listing becomes clear.The workshops preserve the most extensive surviving battery of drop-stamps in the Jewellery Quarter, complemented upstairs by ranges of fly-press shops. All are narrow, constricted spaces, linked by steep stairs, and densely packed with equipment. Machinery of all ages is crammed into every corner, from a unique Keller Pantograph machine bought around 1905 and disused since 1939, to post- war power presses, compressors for gas-and-air torches and a modern electric kiln. Every inch of wall space in the workshops is lined with shelving, bowed under the weight of 30,000 dies, cutting and piercing tools. The larger and heavier dies are piled up on the floors and benches. Parts of candlesticks, condiment sets, sauceboats, jugs and trays line the shelves. Some areas of the factory have been abandoned for decades and are thick with dust. Others, remarkably, show signs of more recent use, with steel tools still gleaming brightly from their racks. A fly-press shop on the first floor, after completion. The roof and the failed plaster ceiling were renewed, but all the room contents were retained in situ throughout the works. (Photo: Historic England)