The Nailmakers' Workshops of Birmingham

'Nearly every region in England had industries of some kind, some of them peculiar to a particular district. The local historian should make himself responsible for recording the remains of any buildings there may be'
WG Hoskins: Local History in England (1959)

It is now nearly thirty years since Professor Hoskins first exhorted the local historian to research and record the physical remains of Industry in their chosen district. For the local historian researching the Industrial archaeology of Birmingham, 'the City of a Thousand Trades', there is no shortage of distinctive trades: rather, the problem is knowing quite where to begin. Hoskins, however, identified a number of stages of Industrial development. and although these have since been refined, they do give a framework to our studies. Of these phases the small workshop 'operated by hand-labour and not by power of any kind', was seen as the second stage of development from the 'Domestic System of Industry', where the trade was undertaken entirely within the dwelling house.

A classic example of the small workshops described by Hoskins is provided by the hand-made or wrought nail trade. Ephraim Ball, writing in 1866, described the trade in the West Midlands in the following terms: ¹

The nailmakers or nailforgers, are what may be termed out-workers; or, in other words, the manufacture of hand-made nails is carried on at the workmen's own homes, where they have a small workshop, which is termed a nail shop

There is now a considerable body of literature about the hand-made nail trade In the West Midlands, but surprisingly little of it Is concerned with the physical remains of the industry. Published work has tended rather to concentrate on local studies of nailmaking in Bromsgrove and the southern part of the Black Country, both core areas of the trade in the last century. ² In addition, particular attention has been paid to the appalling conditions experienced by nailmakers and their families, who were subjected to the evils of sweated industry under the truck system.³

The full history of nailmaking in Birmingham has still to be written, but parish-based studies have already appeared or are in preparation for Harborne, Northfield and Kings Norton. ⁴ In her study of the 1851 census returns for Northfield , the late Ethel Impey ⁵ over thirty years ago drew attention to the significant concentrations of nailmakers that were then to be found in Northfield village itself where '11 out of 17 houses in Church Lane and Church Hill accommodated nailers'. In the outlying districts the figures were even more impressive: 'the 20 cottagers at Moor Street, 55 at Woodgate, and 59 at Bartley Green all contained nailers'. Only recently has Mrs Impey's documentary work been followed up in the field, by looking for remains of these nailers' cottages and their workshops. In the interim, so much of the physical evidence has been altered or destroyed. whilst an older generation of informants, who were associated with the nailing trade, has largely passed on. Yet enough still remains, or did until very recently, to make a study of the industrial archaeology of the local nail trade a worthwhile exercise where documentary and architectural evidence can be correlated.

Because nailmaking was usually undertaken in close proximity to the nailmaker's dwelling. the most useful documentary sources for this study proved to be the tithe maps of the late 1830s and 1810s, combined with the 1811 and 1851 census returns. In this way it was possible to identify surviving workshop buildings on these early large-scale maps; an operation which immediately gave some indication of the minimum age of the building, provided that the structure shown on the map was the same shape and form as that existing today. The next stage was to establish the name of the landowner and occupier, the latter not necessarily being the same as the former. (Success in finding the tentants' names was not guaranteed, as the compilers of the tithe apportionments sometimes simply described the occupiers as 'Various'). Armed with this basic information from the tithe records, it was possible to turn to the nearest census returns for 1811 and 1851 to gather occupational detail about the households and assess the potential work-force available within the family. The names of occupiers were not, as might be expected, consistent between the dates of compilation of the various sources, but by establishing fixed points in the near neighbourhood of the plot of land under scrutiny, It was usually possible to establish a sequence followed by the census enumerators and identify the occupiers of individual houses. As a successful example of this approach may be cited the work undertaken by members of an Extra-Mural class working on the landscape history of Kings Norton parish, who studied Rednal village and were able to pinpoint where the community of nailmakers were living in the mid-l9th century. Using this as a guide to heldwork, several nailshops were discovered at Rednal, either attached to dwellings or situated in gardens.⁶

Documentary research of this nature will also reveal the location of the homes of the nailmasters, their warehouses and truck shops. It will also locate any terraces of nailmakers' cottages - the so-called "nailers rows" - built by the nailmasters. Each of these structure: could justifiably form the subject of a separate study, being part of the industrial archaeology of the wrought nail trade. This article will concentrate on the architectural evidence for the smaller workshops.

Before looking at the structural evidence, the fieldworker needs to be familiar with the processes carried on within the building. Reconstructed workshops my be seen at Avoncroft Museum of Buildings and the Musuem of Science & Industry in Birmingham, where the tools and equipment needed for nailmaking are on display. ⁷ In addition to the hearth, a West Midlands nailer a century ago required a bellows, a small anvil and block, a few cutting and sharpening tools, a peculiarly shaped hammer, and the now indispensable 'oliver'.

Rod iron was heated in the central hearth and fashioned into a great variety of sizes and shapes of nail, with the aid of the 'oliver'. The latter, which had been introduced into the region in the early 19th century, consisted of tread - operated hammers used in conjunction with specially shaped dies set into a block or base. Referring to the nailmakers of Bromsgrove in 1906, Florence Ring summarised the processes in the following way:

Women are rarely able to earn more than 5/- to 6/- a week, and it looks sadly out of place to see women and girls working the hand-bellows to blow up the forge, then hammering the ends of the red-hot iron to point the nail, bending it and inserting it in a small socket, after which a heavy hammer called the 'oliver', flattens the head of the nail. ¹⁰

Field evidence of workshop structures recorded in Birmingham over the last fifteen years has revealed a number of common characteristics to these nailshops: all the surviving examples were built of brick; the external walls were constructed of double brick thickness i.e. 9"; when built as pairs or in a terrace internal walls were reduced to single brick i.e. four-and-a-half inches. All had gabled tiled roofs and provided an internal space of one bay per workshop, whose size varied from 10'4" x 10' 6" (The Cottage, Quinton) to 14' 2" x 12' 1" (4-6 Church Hill, Northfield). ¹¹ Light was admitted through unglazed wooden windows fitted with external wooden shutters. Larger two-light windows were normally situated in the front wall near the entrance which was by way of a boarded stable-type door. Smaller windows lit the sides or back of the workshops. No close dating for individual shops has been established, but most surviving examples appear to belong to the first half of the 19th century. All survivals were single storey structures.

Nailing tools and equipment survived in only one example, behind Nos. 9-11, Wood Lane, Woodgate. The fixed equipment was in the form of a centrally placed forge hearth and chimney, the latter being constructed of bricks laid on their edge with oversailing alternate course:. The site of the oliver or treadle hammer was identified by oral testimony from a former operative of the Woodgate buildings, who also supplied an account of the processes involved in making wrought nails.

At five examples it was noted that the internal back wall was recessed immediately behind the position of the hearth bellows. Apart from this feature, these outbuildings are hardly distinguishable from other outbuildings, particularly the domestic brewhouse, once their tools, equipment and hearth have been removed. In the brewhouse the essential equipment is a copper for boiling water used for washing. and an oven for baking. ¹² William Pitt's drawings of the newly-built cottages at the Lickey (figure 2) shows a nailshop and a brewhouse against the gable end of the two storey main range. ¹³ Externally they appear to be identical with a separate entrance window and chimney. That on the right was built as a workshop for the nailer, so internally it is equipped with a hearth, whilst the other was intended as a communal brewhouse used by the three households. In plan, therefore, is an oven and a copper. If all this equipment had been removed it is unlikely that the fieldworker would have been able to identify the function of these outbuildings, and it is necessary to turn to both documentary evidence and, where appropriate, oral testimony. The situation is complicated by the fact that at several sites former nailshops had been converted later to brewhouses, where a washing copper and a brick oven had been clearly Inserted into an earlier structure.¹⁴

Figure 2: Cottages newly built at the Lickey, Bromsgrove Parish, from W. Pitt General View of the Agriculture of the County of Worcester (1813)

Figure 3 - Types of surviving nailshops in the Birmingham area

Since the brick built nailshops were so similar, a simple classification based on the location of the workshop in its relationship to the dwelling house is proposed. Three main types are distinguishable:

a) Attached to the dwelling house.

The workshop is usually a single storey extension built against the gable end wall of the house. It may be contemporary with the dwelling, as in Pitt's drawings, or it may be a later addition.

In its simplest form the type is represented by:

The Cottage, 497 Ridgacre Road, Quinton (Halesowen Parish) SO 993847

The building was formerly known as "The Old Nail House of Quinton'. It consists of a two bay, two storeyed brick unit parallel to Ridgacre Road, with a single storeyed brick extension of one bay to the west on the corner of High Street. This lower range continued the line of the front wall but was not as deep as the main unit. On the north there are modern single storeyed extensions. At the time of the property's sale in 1976 it was claimed that the original "Old Nail House" still existed in the garden as a detached brick building. However, on examination this was found to be a comparatively modern structure with an insubstantial fireplace and a flat roof. It is far more likely that the nailshop is represented by the single storeyed western range which is now used as a reception hall and has internal dimensions of 10' 4" x 10' 6". Its roof is not celled and has exposed heavy purlins set in the gable walls, rafters and a ridge. A modern fireplace between this area and the present sitting room on the east appears to be on the site of the original hearth. Its chimney still rises against the western end of the two storeyed range, which has its own domestic hearth of generous proportions against the eastern gable. The walls are unusually thick due to internal stone cladding of recent date.

Before the modern extensions on the north were added and the piercing on the original end wall of (he cottage there was no direct internal access from the two storeyed range into the westernmost bay, a fact which reinforces the interpretation of the latter area as an ancillary building rather than part of the living quarters. The brickwork of both cottage and workshop is rendered so that the chronological relationship between the two sections is not clear. ¹⁵

In the Ridgacre Township Tithe Apportionment of 1844 the occupiers are given as Thomas Smith, the landowner, and David Smith. Unfortunately it has not been possible to trace either of these names in the 1841 or 1851 census returns. However, the district supported many nailmakers until the end of the century. Kelly's Directory of Birmingham of 1890 noted that "The Quinton is chiefly an agricultural district, but a number of the inhabitants are engaged in nailmaking". By 1900 that description had been modified to "some of the inhabitants are engaged in hand nail making ".

One or more workshops may be added to the extension according to the needs of the community. At Avoncroft Museum of Buildings, near Bromsgrove, a pair of nailshops separated by a central brewhouse have been re-erected from Sidemoor, Bromsgrove, where at their original site they formed a long extension to a group of four cottages, at the end of which was another nailshop and brewhouse. ¹⁶

A variant of this type, although much later than most. is the two storey extension which it was proposed to build in 1890 on to "Mr Groves's Cottages at Moor Street" (Northfield Parish). Here first floor accommodation was to provide a bedchamber over the new nailshop. The extension was designed by the Birmingham architects Crouch & Butler. ¹⁷

b) Detached.

The most complete example of this type is represented by:

9-11 Wood Lane, Woodgate (Northfield Parish) SO 995824

Two single story detached brick nailshops lay 3-4 feet behind the rear wings of nos. 9-11 Wood Lane, which were built c. 1800-20 as a pair of two storey 3 bay brick cottages. The nailshops were later in date that the dwellings; their brickwork was considerably larger than that used in the cottages and they were not marked on the Northfield Tithe Map of 1810. The 1851 census lists the Connop and Taylor families in the cottages. Joseph Taylor, the head of one household, was then aged 56 and was a nailer, as were his two daughters, Sarah aged 24 and Betsey aged 13, and his sons William (20) and Joseph (17). In addition there were two younger sons at school aged 11 and 9 to call upon for additional labour. Next door, Joseph Connop was a 45-year-old larm labourer, but his wife Maria and their three daughters and two sons were all nailmakers. By 1861 the tenancies of the cottages had changed to the Woodward and Guest families. In the census of that year Thomas Woodward (1838-1926) and his wife Mary were both listed as nailmakers, whilst their neighbours, William and Hannah Guest and their son William, were described as 'rivet makers'. The Woodwards had no children of their own but after the death of Mary's sister they brought up her child Harold Hall (1893-I 984). Mr Hall's memories of the nail trade in Woodgate and Moor Street were recorded in 1982 and are featured in the displays in the recently-opened Woodgate Valley Country' Park Visitor Centre.

The southern nailshop behind No.11 measured 14' 4" x 13' 5" overall. It had a pitched tiled roof and its gable faced the rear wing of the house. Two main phases were distinguished in the brickwork: the twelve lower courses were 8 1/2 - 8 3/4 x 2 5/8 - 2 3/4 x 4 1/4" in a bonding of between 2-4 courses of stretchers to one of double header-stretcher. Above this the bricks were 9 x 3 x 4 1/4" in a type of Flemish stretcher bond of 3 or 4 courses of stretchers to one of header-stretcher, with occasional double headers. The west elevation was pierced by a small single light wooden casement in the north-west corner. Its fittings had all been removed and the north-west corner had been partitioned off to form a lavatory' in the 1930's. The positions of the hearth and bellows were supplied by Mr Hall's memory', the rear of the bellows corresponding to a recess in the north wall of the shop. Either side of the southern two-light windows were small recesses used as shelves. The roof was supported by single purl ins, 9" x 3", set in the gable wails and supporting the rafters.

The northern shop was slightly smaller, 12' 7" by 13' 5" overall. It was entered by a straight headed doorway in the north-west corner of the gable end. To its south was a two light unglazed wooden window under a segmental arched head. There were external wooden shutters to this window. Three smaller unglazed windows with shutters existed in the other sides. whilst two others in the east and south walls had been blocked. The roof structure was similar to that in the southern shop. Entry to its pigeon loft over the eastern side of the roof was via the east gable. In the middle of the shop was a brick hearth with achimney constructed of 9" x 4 1/8" x 3" bricks laid on edge. According to Mr Hall. the bellows were operated by treadles and spring poles either side of the hearth, whilst to the south, between the hearth and wall, lay the oliver. ¹⁸

The northern nailshop was presented to the City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, by Mr Hall and his son. It was dismantled in 1979 and is currently in store.

c) Terraced

This group. consisting of a detached terrace of multiple workshops. sometimes with a brewhouse in the range, is really a variant of the single detached workshop. It is represented by:

462-470 Lickey Road, Rednal (Kings Norton Parish) SO 9907615

Just under 12 feet from the back wall of No 462 was a three bay single storey range of workshops terraced into the hillside and set at right angles to the cottages which fronted the road. The terrace was constructed of brick in Flemish stretcher bond with a single stepped eaves below old tiled roofs. Each workshop was 12' 1 1/2" deep internally, whilst widths varied from east to west. : 11' 3 3/4": 11' 6": 11' 8 1/2". Each was entered from the eastern end of the south wall i.e. the nearest available point for each unit to the two cottages. A stable door of boarded construction survived in the middle bay. To the west of each doorway was a two light wooden framed unglazed window, two of which retained an external wooden shutter apiece. The westernmost workshop was additionally lit by two small openings (19 3/4" wide) in the north or back wall, whilst that on the eastern gable end had one window in the back wall and another of recent date inserted in the gable end. Inside, the back wall of each workshop was recessed roughly at the centre point and reduced the brickwork to a 4 1/2" wall for a length of 35 1/2". A date in the first quarter of the 19th century is proposed for the cottages, whilst the workshops may have been built slightly later.

The Tithe Apportionment of 1843 descrIbes the site as "seven houses and gardens", but the Map shows the workshops lust behind the dwellings on the north edge of the gardens. The owner in 1843 was "Edward Grove, trustee of the late Thomas Withers", whilst its occupiers were then described, somewhat frustratingly, as 'Various'. However. by a careful correlation of the Tithe Map and Apportionment with the 1841 and 1851 census returns for the whole of the settlement at Rednal, and by using known fixed points, it has been possible Lo deduce that in 1851 four heads of household occupying the seven houses were nailers. The number of nailmakers living in these seven cottages and working the three shops increased to thirteen once wives, children and lodgers, all described as 'nailers' are added.

Both the cottages and workshops were demolished in 1985, although at the time of writing the site has not been developed.

The surviving physical evidence of nailshops represents structures which were erected between 120-170 years ago. It is worth remembering that these probably represent the more robust and better built examples. As such they may not therefore necessarily be representative of the variety of building types that once existed. A warning note was struck in 1812 by William Pitt in his enthusiastic description of the then newly-built terrace of brick cottages with attached nailshop and brewhouse on the Lickey. ²⁰ He described this group as one of "the most comfortable cottages I had an opportunity ol observing in the county". Unfortunately, he tells us little about the norm, preferring to hail the Lickey cottages as models for improving landlords. As a corrective to any conclusions drawn only from surviving evidence, we should note the description or the nalishops given in the Parliamentary Report on the Condition of Nailmakers, published in 1888 :

As a rule the workshops are rude structures, and many of them are in an almost ruinous condition.

A rare insight into a less substantial type of workshop is provided by Henry Pope's pen and ink drawings of a nailer's shop on Millpool Hill, Kings Heath, held in the collections of the City Museum & Art Gallery. ²¹ Pope (1843-1908) was a Kings Norton artist who was active in the last quarter of the 19th century. His two drawings depict a timber structure of post-hole constructions built on a roughly square plan. The side walls are formed of vertical boarding, whilst the roof is constructed of thatch. Above it rises a chimney, presumably from the hearth. There appears to have been some storage space at first floor level over the entrance, whilst the door and window were slightly set back beneath this overhang. The recessed front wall suggests similarities with the arrangement of a timber shoeing forge which existed in Digbeth. Birmingham until 1804,²² although here the area in front of the partition appears to have served as a trav'us providing a secure area for shoeing horses.

Pen and ink drawing by Henry Pope (1843-1908) "A Nailor's Workshop. Mill Pool Hill", Kings Heath Reproduced by permission of the City Museum & Art Gallery, Birmingham

The Millpool Hill building may therefore be representative of a once common workshop type which leaves little or no archaeological evidence. It may also provide evidence for the norm of the earlier nailers' workshops, which are only known from inventory evidence. Their contents are usually listed summarily as shop tools and equipment with a probate valuation. In Kings Norton parish, whenever a nailshop is mentioned, it is listed after the service rooms of the house and before the barn, If there is one. It is significant that there is never a mention of a chamber over the shop, suggesting that these are single story structures independent of the dwelling house. In 1866 Ephraim Ball recalled these once familiar small farmers' nailshops: ²⁴

A few years ago, a flail shop was frequently attached to small farmhouses, in which the farmer and his family made nails when they could not work on the farm.

Finally, the fieldworkers will need to turn their attention to the increasing number of quite erroneous claims, often made with good intentions in the cause of conservation, that certain buildings were associated with nailmaking. Unfortunately most of these claims cannot be substantiated: the so-called nailshops usually turn out to have always been brewhouses, or the nailers cottages post-date the local nail trade. Local historians, therefore, have a particular responsibility to make available the results of their research, using the combined evidence of documents, maps and oral testimony to throw light on the standing buildings of their chosen community. In this way attention can be drawn to those sites which are genuinely part of the industrial archaeology of the local nail trade to ensure that they are safeguarded.

STEPHEN PRICE

References

1. E. Ball 'The Hand-Made Nail Trade" in The Resources, Products and Industrial Industry of Birmingham and the Midland Hardware District ed S Timmins (1866) p110.
2. E I Davies "The Midland Hand-Wrought Nail Trade" unpublished thesis, University of Birmingham, 1933; A F Moseley "The Nailmakers" in Journal of West Midlands Regional Studies vol 2 1968 pp 6-37 (with descriptions of processess then in operation at Mount Street. Halesowen): M B Rowlands Masters and Men in the West Midland Metalware Trades before the Industrial Revolution (1975) especially pp 23-28.
3. For example. Robert H Sherard The White Slaves of England (7th edition 1910) ch 2 "The Nailmakers of Bromsgrove" Richard Mudie-Smith Sweated Industries: being a Handbook of the Daily News Exhibition (1906) pp 52-52 "Bromsgrove Nailmakers"
4. A Williams & L G Day "The Nailmakers of Northfield". Northfield Conservation Group Occasional Papers No 7 n d; S W Davies "The Nailmakers of Harborne" below. pp 16-23-; study of Kings Norton in progress.
5. ES Impey Northfield and Weoley ii 1851(1952) pp 4.10.
6. The research was undertaken by Miss F E Hopkins and Mrs W Rindl under the writer's guidance. It was reported briefly in Worcestershire Archaeology Newsletter no 14, June l974 as "Nailmaking in North-East Worcestershire.' p21.
7. The nailshops now at Avoncroft came from Melbourne Road, Sidemoor, Bromsgrove, whilst the tools and equipment displayed in the Birmingham Science Museum were from Golden Cross Lane, Catshill. Bromsgrove.
8. Parliamentary Report as to the Condition of Nail Makers and Small Chain Makers in South Staffordshire and East Worcestershire. - p 5.
9. Rowlands op cit p 28.
10. FT Ring "Bromsgrove Nailmakers" in Mudie-Smithop cit p 52.
11. No example of the larger type of nailshop. which was to be seen in the Black Country a century ago, has been found within the city boundary. It was then said that in the larger shop "a great many people may be employed, either the members of the occupier's family or other persons to whom he lets shoproom and tools" (Parliamentary Report . - P5). A pen and wash drawing by Joseph Barber (1758-1811) in the collections of the City Museum & Art Gallery, Birmingham (650'26) depicts the interior of a larger nailshop in or near Birmingham c.1800. It was at least two bays long separated by a tie-beam truss. Barber shows a large hearth being worked by two women and a man. whilst on the far side of the workshop a woman sits on a crude four poster bed.
12. In Birmingham the brewhouse appears to have lost its original function as a place for domestic brewing by the 19th century, and perhaps much earlier.
13. W Pitt General View of the Agriculture of the County of Worcester (1813) plate II facing p 22.
14. For example at Nos 4-6 Church Hill, Northfield, where the detached outbuilding south of No 6 was clearly the original nallshop and latterly the brewhouse. Typescript Interim report based on field survey, 1978, in Historic Building Files. City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham - Local History Department.
15. This description is based on field survey undertaken in February 1976. Typescript interim report in Historic Building Files. City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham - Local History Department.
16. (Guide Book) Avoncroft Museum of Buildings n.d. but c. 1972 p5.
17. BIRMINGHAM REFERENCE LIBRARY Archives Department: Kings Norton Rural District Council Buildings Plan No 1282.
18. Typescript interim report based on field survey 1978 in Historic Buildings Files. City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham - Local History Department.
19. Field Notes and photographs taken in 1973 in Historic Buildings Files, City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham - Local History Department.
20. Pitt ep cli p 22.
21. City Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham - Local History Department: l35'08; 136'08.
22. R K Dent Old and New Birmingham (1880) pp.195 and 204.
23. On the origins of the name trav'us see George Ewart Evans Where beards wag all: the relevance of the oral tradition. (1970) pp 163-164.
24. E Ball op cit p110.

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to the owners and occupiers of nailshops recorded. especially the late Mr Harold Hall of Woodgate (l893-l984), whose memories of the local nail trade were recorded for the City Sound Archive. I owe thanks to Miss F E Hopkins and Mrs W Rindl, members of the University of Birmingham Extra Mural Class, "The Making of Kings Norton", who undertook research on the local nail trade and analysed the census material for Rednal. Special thanks are due to Mrs Wendy Barson for typing this article and most of the field survey reports used in the preparation of this paper.