Matthew Boulton James Watt William Murdoch
By Alan Clawley.
The Science Museum has just opened its ‘newest’ exhibit – a re-creation of James Watt’s Soho workshop with all its contents as found in 1924. Sadly it isn’t in Birmingham’s Museum of Science and Industry which was closed in 2000, nor is it in Soho House, the renowned meeting place of the Lunar Society now largely ignored in the back streets of Handsworth, nor is it in the entry-charging ‘Thinktank’ in Birmingham’s run-down Eastside, but in London’s glamorous South Kensington.
So how did the cultural and civic leaders of Birmingham and the Black Country, birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, miss out on such an important cultural tourism opportunity?
This isn’t the first time that they have been blind to the significance of their own industrial heritage. The Soho Foundry in Smethwick is important enough to be a World Heritage site but hardly anything remains to be seen on the ground. It’s all been bulldozed. The Soho Manufactory, the Soho Mint and the extensive landscaped grounds surrounding Soho House were overwhelmed by Victorian housing development by 1900. Only Soho House remains in splendid isolation.
Today’s leaders seem to have inherited that same reluctance to recognise, respect and even exploit the city’s unique industrial past and its artistic, architectural and classical music legacy. Even the city’s best known school of artists, the Pre-Raphaelites, is seldom given the prominence it deserves.
BMAG at last has an exhibition of drawings that have been shown to the public for the first time. Perhaps the pre-Raphaelites like William Morris are not liked because they reacted against the unhappy effects of industrialisation in Birmingham. Likewise, the Romantic composers such as Dvorak and Mendelsohn who premiered their work in Birmingham Town Hall in the 19th Century, were just as nostalgic for a lost pre-industrial world.
As well as avoiding the past, the City’s leaders also have a tendency to run down home-grown talent, preferring instead, artists, musicians and architects from London or further afield. A case in point is the Central Library whose designer, an architect born and trained in Birmingham, has been repeatedly insulted by the council and the press, whilst Dutch architects Mecanoo, who were unknown in Birmingham before they were given the £10 million contract to design the new Library of Birmingham, can do no wrong.
Taking advantage of Millennium Lottery money the City Council decided to close its free and popular Museum of Science and Industry in Newhall Street and transfer some of its contents to the independent shiny new ‘Thinktank’.
It could probably have been designed to house the entire contents of the old museum but it seems that a decision was made to re-brand it for the twenty-first century. In the process most of the smell, smoke, noise and dirt of industry was replaced by sanitised digital displays whilst Health and Safety rules dictated that the City of Birmingham steam locomotive could no longer move along its short length of track. Many artifacts from the old free Museum were put into storage in a big warehouse in Nechells where they can only be viewed by appointment. Although I asked Councillor Martin Mullaney some time ago if there was a catalogue of what they have there, I never had a reply, so I really don’t know what treasures are hidden there.
Friends of the Central Library and a number of architecture students are now studying new uses for the Central Library. We think it would be ridiculous to knock it down as soon as it’s emptied of books just to stop any more applications for Listing being made. It will be many years before Paradise Circus is likely to be redeveloped and in the meantime who wants a large hole in the ground in place of a useful building?
One idea could be to use the building to display the industrial artefacts at present gathering dust in the Nechells warehouse but we wouId like to hear of any other suggestions from visitors to this website.
Alan Clawley
Friends of the Central Library
