Birmingham

Metalworking industries were particularly important in Birmingham. However there were many other important industries too: in fact Birmingham became known as the “City of a thousand trades”, making, among other things, cutlery, buttons, guns, nails and screws, tools, jewellery, toys, locks, and ornaments.

For most of the 19th century, the city’s industry consisted mainly of small workshops, rather than large factories. When engineering industries became more important, towards the end of the 19th century, more and more large mills and factories were built.

Steam power was not widely used in Birmingham at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution because people preferred to use hand power in the small workshops, instead of steam.

There was also the famous Birmingham Mint, once described as, “the finest example of a private mint [in Europe]”. This was set up in 1850, when Ralph Heaton, a brassfounder, obtained the equipment that Matthew Boulton had used in his Soho Mint, and founded the Heaton Mint — later to be known as the Birmingham Mint.