Watt’s house at Harper’s Hill (Regent Place)

History

A Scot in Birmingham

James Watt arrived in Birmingham from Scotland in 1774, and his experimental engine was brought to Soho the same year. The next year Parliament extended his patent and his partnership with Matthew Boulton began. Where Watt lived for his first three years in the town is not known. From 1777 he lived at Harper’s Hill, on the north-west side of the town, in the area that later became the Jewellery Quarter. Today the street is called Regent Place.

He stayed thirteen years, until June 1790, when he moved out to his new house, Heathfield, in Handsworth. Those thirteen years were the most inventive of his life.

The busiest years

At Harper’s Hill Watt was a working partner in a young firm selling engines to mines and mills, and the improvements came thick and fast. Revolutionary Players dates rotary motion to 1781 and the double-acting engine to 1782. The sun-and-planet gear, which turned the engine’s up-and-down beam into rotary motion, was patented in Watt’s name in 1781, though the Library of Birmingham credits the invention to William Murdoch.

Watt’s mind ran beyond steam. On 24 July 1778 he told his friend Joseph Black that he had “lately discovered a method of copying [letters] instantaneously”. It became the letter-copying press. He took Boulton and James Keir as partners, and presses went on sale in 1780.

Letters to Harper’s Hill

Harper’s Hill also put Watt in the middle of Birmingham’s scientific life. He was a full member of the Lunar Society, and in 1781 he wrote to Erasmus Darwin setting out the topics for the next meeting. Joseph Priestley’s letter of 29 April 1783, now in the Library of Birmingham, is addressed to Watt at Harper’s Hill. At that time both men were working on the question of what water is made of, a dispute that later tangled Watt up with Henry Cavendish and Antoine Lavoisier. In 1785 Watt was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

What is left

The same spot, then and now

1888–1913

Today

The house has gone. When it was demolished is not recorded in the sources we have checked. But something may survive. In 1981 Historic England listed a modest building at 13A Regent Place. Its list entry describes it as “Late C18 or early C19 origin. Rear wing or stabling perhaps of the now demolished Harpers Hill house where James Watt lived from 1777 to 1790”. It is a two-storey red brick range with workshop windows under the eaves. When it was listed, it held the works of C. Harris, described as the last sand caster in the Jewellery Quarter.

That word “perhaps” matters. The listing does not claim certainty, and nor should we. What is certain is that Watt lived on this street, and that the Jewellery Quarter grew up around the spot where he once lived on the edge of town.

The plaque

In 2003 Birmingham Civic Society put up a blue plaque on 15–17 Regent Place: “James Watt engineer, inventor and industrial pioneer lived here 1777–1790”. Crowd-sourced records sometimes place it on Regent Street, but photographs show it on Regent Place.

Walk down Regent Place today and you pass jewellers’ workshops, small manufacturers and converted factories. It is the right sort of neighbourhood for him. The street where Watt dreamt up the copying press is still a street where people make things.

What happened here?

James Watt lived here from 1777 to June 1790. In these years he developed rotary motion and the double-acting engine, invented the letter-copying press (1778–80), joined Lunar Society meetings and corresponded with Priestley, who wrote to him here in 1783.

Why it disappeared

Redevelopment

The house was demolished; neither the date nor the reason is recorded in the sources checked. The street became part of the Jewellery Quarter’s dense workshops.