Boulton, Watt and Murdoch (“The Golden Boys”)

History

Designed for war, made for peace

In 1938 Birmingham’s leading architectural sculptor, William Bloye, drew up designs for a monument to the three men who made the steam engine pay: Matthew Boulton, the manufacturer; James Watt, the inventor; and William Murdoch, the Scottish engineer who kept their engines running. The money came in 1939, from a bequest of £8,000 by Richard Wheatley, a local leather-goods maker, and £7,500 from the City Council.

Then war broke out. The group was not finished until the 1950s. It was cast in bronze by John Galizia & Son of London and covered in gold leaf. On 14 September 1956 Sir Percy Mills unveiled it on Broad Street, in front of the Register Office.

Three men and a drawing

Bloye shows the three men in eighteenth-century dress, studying a drawing of a steam engine, with their names and dates cut beneath. Brummies soon gave them nicknames. To some they were the Golden Boys. To others, less kindly, the Carpet Salesmen.

Away and back

The statue was restored and re-gilded in September 2006. In 2017 the Metro tram extension came down Broad Street and the three went into storage. On 29 April 2022 they were lifted on to a new plinth in Centenary Square, outside Symphony Hall, close to their old spot.

In 2021 Birmingham Museums Trust commissioned the historian Stephen Mullen to appraise all three men’s links with slavery and the economy built on it. His findings are summarised on each man’s page.

The Golden Boys still catch the light in Centenary Square, three engineers bent over a drawing, as if the next great machine is about to come off the page.

What happened here?

A memorial to the Boulton & Watt partnership was unveiled on Broad Street in 1956, re-gilded in 2006, stored from 2017 for the tram works and reinstated in Centenary Square in 2022.