Description:When Matthew Boulton first planned the Manufactory (1761) it was intended to make all manner of Birmingham hardware products (‘toys’) later diversifying into plated and silverware (from 1767). He could not have imagined that his Manufactory would eventually be making steam engines. When in 1775 Boulton entered into the partnership with James Watt to sell steam engines, for the first two decades this was not to supply complete working engines, but to provide licenses to build them based on drawings supplied.
The infant firm of Boulton and Watt made its profit based upon a percentage of savings in coal used. This arrangement was more to Watt’s rather than Boulton’s liking. Most of the parts were manufactured locally as near to the site of the intended engine as possible, with a recommendation that the Wilkinson brothers of Shropshire cast and bore the cylinder, the most difficult and vital part.
The early buildings of the Boulton and Watt engine works were, therefore, on a small scale, making only specialist parts that local foundries could not undertake. There were only two workshops by 1782 and in this year, with the invention of the ‘Sun-and Planet’ crank, the Watt engine could be applied to work machines. An engine house was built at the junction of the two workshops where rotary power engines were tested for the first time. Here an engine was later installed to power the lathes and drills for the adjoining workshops. Another set of workshops was built in 1790-2, expanding southwards into Boulton’s garden and towards the Hockley Pool. This included a Drawing Office in which many of the plans in the Boulton and Watt collection were produced.
Following the construction of the Soho Foundry in 1795-6, a major expansion of the Manufactory engine works took place between 1802 and 1804. For the first time complete engines could be made with power provided by new small engines designed by William Murdoch. James Watt and Co, a firm with no Watt family connection, took over the Boulton and Watt workshops in 1848 and demolished the buildings in about 1853 to consolidate their business at the Soho Foundry site.