The gun trade

On the map

9 places connected with The gun trade. Tap a number for directions — some sites are private homes or gardens, so each place’s page says what you can see from the street.

1. St Mary’s Church, Whittall Street — Lost, Site redeveloped · Directions to St Mary’s Church, Whittall Street (opens Google Maps)
2. Westley Richards, Pritchett Street — Surviving, Surviving but altered · Directions to Westley Richards, Pritchett Street (opens Google Maps)
3. Westley Richards works, Grange Road, Bournbrook — Lost, Site redeveloped · Directions to Westley Richards works, Grange Road, Bournbrook (opens Google Maps)
4. Westley Richards, 82 High Street — Lost · Directions to Westley Richards, 82 High Street (opens Google Maps)
5. Birmingham Gun Barrel Proof House — Surviving, Surviving but altered · Directions to Birmingham Gun Barrel Proof House (opens Google Maps)
6. The Gun Quarter — Partly surviving, Site redeveloped
7. Kynoch’s Lion Works, Witton — Lost, Site redeveloped
8. BSA works, Armoury Road, Small Heath — Lost, Site redeveloped
9. Great Barr Hall — Partly surviving, At risk · Directions to Great Barr Hall (opens Google Maps)

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Key dates

1. May 1766 — Lady Shelburne watches John Taylor enamel a boxLord and Lady Shelburne tour Birmingham’s works. Taylor enamels a landscape on a box in front of them. Shelburne notes that a button passes through fifty hands, and that half the guns sent to Africa will burst.
2. August 1796 — Samuel Galton is disowned by the QuakersAfter he defends his family’s gun trade, Warwickshire North Monthly Meeting disowns Samuel Galton junior. His firm had supplied guns to the African slave trade.
3. 1804 — The Galtons leave the gun trade for bankingSamuel Galton junior and his son Samuel Tertius give up gunmaking and turn the Steelhouse Lane premises into the Galton bank.
4. 1812 — Westley Richards sets up as a gunmakerWilliam Westley Richards, about 22, goes into business at 82 High Street. Selling through a Bond Street agent, his firm becomes one of Birmingham’s best-known sporting gunmakers and is still working in the city today.
5. 1813 — The Birmingham Proof House is establishedAn Act of Parliament, sought and paid for by the gun trade, makes proof of gun barrels compulsory and sets up guardians and a proof master. The Proof House in Banbury Street is built in 1813–14.
6. 1846 — Frederick Douglass speaks in the Gun QuarterThe American anti-slavery campaigner Frederick Douglass speaks at Ebenezer Chapel on Steelhouse Lane, in the heart of Birmingham’s gun quarter. Joseph Sturge is in the audience.
7. 1861 — BSA incorporatedLarger Birmingham gunmakers incorporate the Birmingham Small Arms Company to mass-produce guns by machine, in answer to the government factory at Enfield. Its Small Heath works open in 1863.
8. 1861 — Percussion-cap works licensed at WittonAfter the 1859 explosion at Whittall Street, a powder magazine and percussion-cap works is licensed at Witton. George Kynoch becomes proprietor in 1862.
9. 1863 — BSA factory opens at Small HeathThe Birmingham Small Arms works opens on a 25-acre site on Golden Hillock Lane (later Armoury Road) to make small arms by machinery.
10. November–December 1870 — Explosions at Witton and Ludlow’s cartridge worksAn explosion at Kynoch’s Witton works kills eight; three weeks later one at Ludlow & Co.’s neighbouring cartridge works kills 51. The outcry brings government regulation of cartridge-filling.
11. 6 July 1884 — Kynoch’s becomes a limited companyGeorge Kynoch sells his Witton ammunition business to a new limited company for £260,000 in cash plus shares. Four years later he is forced off the board and Arthur Chamberlain becomes chairman.
12. 1894 — Westley Richards moves to BournbrookWestley Richards opens a purpose-built gun factory in Grange Road, Bournbrook, leaving the cramped workshops of the Gun Quarter. It stays for 114 years before returning to Pritchett Street, near the old quarter, in 2008.
13. November 1918 — Kynoch joins Nobel IndustriesKynoch Ltd, whose Witton works employed about 18,000 people in the war, joins the explosives merger that becomes Nobel Industries. In 1926 Nobel becomes part of ICI, and Witton becomes ICI Metals in 1929.
14. c. 1950s–1960s — The Gun Quarter is cut through by the Inner Ring RoadBuilding the Dental Hospital and the Inner Ring Road demolishes much of the Gun Quarter, leaving, in the council’s words, ‘only a fragment’.

The full timeline →