What was here?
A long rectangular yard on the far side of the Hockley Brook from the main works, lined on both sides by fitting shops, with forges across the far end and a magazine by the brook culvert.
History
Engines after the Foundry
The story usually told is simple: Boulton & Watt assembled engines at the Soho Manufactory until the purpose-built Soho Foundry opened at Smethwick in 1795–96, and then engine-making moved there. George Demidowicz’s reconstruction of the Manufactory shows that it was not quite so tidy.
His composite plan of the works around 1805, the year they reached their greatest extent, labels a block on the far side of the Hockley Brook: “new engine yard 1802-4”. It is a long walled yard, reached past a magazine beside the brook culvert. Fitting shops line both long sides, and forges stand across the far end. Next to the old engine house, on the near side of the brook, were the earlier forges and an erecting shop.
Who worked here
Val Loggie notes that the engine works buildings at the Manufactory belonged to both Boulton and Watt, unlike the rest of the works, which was Boulton’s alone. Where precision manufacturing of small engine parts went on at Soho, she writes, it happened in the engine works. Demidowicz’s book gives a whole chapter to “The Manufactory Engine Works”.
The same spot, then and now
1888–1913
Today
Old map: Ordnance Survey six-inch, reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland (CC BY 4.0). Today: © OpenStreetMap contributors.
The yard disappeared with the rest of the Manufactory, which was demolished in stages and gone by 1863. Industrial units off Factory Road now stand where it was. Several years after the Foundry opened, Soho was still building new workshops for engines.
What happened here?
Fitting shops and forges of the Manufactory’s engine works, laid out in 1802–04, worked here in the early 19th century.
Why it mattered
It shows that the Soho Manufactory kept an engine works, and was expanding it, after the Soho Foundry opened in 1795–96.
Why it disappeared
Industrial decline · Redevelopment
The Manufactory closed around 1850 and was demolished in stages; nothing was left by 1863. The site later became industrial land.
The New Engine Yard, among Boulton’s works, on today’s streets
What’s there now
What replaced it
Industrial units off Factory Road.
What survives
Nothing known above ground.
Today
Factory Road, Hockley/Handsworth (B18). The yard lay south-west of the culverted Hockley Brook, among the industrial units off Factory Road.
Sources and further reading
The yard is known from Demidowicz’s composite plan (labelled ‘new engine yard 1802-4’) and his overlay on the modern map; what work it did and how long it was used have not been found in the sources read. Its demolition is not separately dated.
- The Soho Manufactory, Mint and Foundry, West Midlands: Where Boulton, Watt and Murdoch Made History — George Demidowicz, Historic England / Liverpool University Press, 2022. composite plan c.1805 (fig. 4 in the publisher’s blog) and ch. 4
- Soho Depicted: prints, drawings and watercolours of Matthew Boulton, his manufactory and estate, 1760–1809 (PhD thesis) — V. A. Loggie, University of Birmingham, 2011. p. 155 and n. 580
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