Jewellery Quarter Restaurant?

We're no stranger to redevelopments in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter, and just when we thought it was going quiet on that scene, plans are being discussed over the conversion of a St Paul's Square office building!

Plans to convert 63 St Paul's Square into a restaurant and flats will be adding the nightlife of the Quarter.

The Grade-II listed office building located in St Paul's Square on the corner of Ludgate Hill has yet to have many details released about this project as no end occupier has been named.

The Space Studio, a Quarter based architecture agency, will be working on the project.
The restaurant is set to feature in a new commercial unit on the ground floor, with a dining area and servery, a section for the staff in the basement, along with a one-bedroom flat on both the first and second floor.

St Paul's Square remains to be a lively place for commercial and residential use, and the addition of a new restaurant will be a great one, complementing the successful venues dotted about the square, with the likes of The Rectory, The Jam House, Ropewalk, Pasta di Piazza (another venue set to undergo an expansion) and more!

A heritage statement had been prepared fo the application outlining the building's development in the late 1890's.
The architect of the building was the infamous Sydney Allcock. The statement claimed that the building later became a Barclays branch, then proceeded to be converted into offices.

Concluding the report: "This scheme is considered to have no adverse impact on the fabric, character or significance of the listed building.

"The proposed changes are considered to be well designed and proportionate as well as respecting the basic character of the building and having no visual impact on the character of the conservation area."

More stuff to look forward to in the Jewellery Quarter!
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Posted by Birmingham Jewellery Quarter on Wednesday, May 20, 2015

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The Jewellery Quarter

Just east of Icknield Street and west of Great Hampton Street/Constitution Hill in Hockley is the Jewellery Quarter.
Well known for housing the greatest concentration of wholesale and retail jewellery manufacturers in all of Europe.

It is fact that over a third of all of British Jewellery is manufactured within one mile of Birmingham's City Centre.

Chamberlain Clock in the square

An early reference to jewellery manufacture was mentioned in a survey of Birmingham, conducted in 1553, when a goldsmith named Roger Pemberton was living in the town.
Already in the sixteenth century, Birmingham's metalworks industry had been successfully developed and were manufacturing cutlery, nails, swords and horse transport related products.
There was a trend of heavier metal-bashing work, which was concentrated on in the Black Country, while smaller metal materials that required more skill and precision were made in Birmingham.

Badges, buckles and buttons, candle-sticks and candle snuffers, corkscrews, cruets, ink-stands, mirrors, seals, snuff boxes, sugar tongs, toothpick cases, watch chains, swords and gun were many of the quality range of goods that were made, known back then as 'toys'.
Also, in addition to working with steel, brass and copper, two other materials that were becoming increasingly used were silver and gold.

The progression towards small but quality items was driven by the promise of higher profits.
By 1780, a local directory in the Quarter has listed over twenty jewellers, even though there were definitely more. By this time, the industry had spread across the town, covering the area now know as the City Centre.

When the Jewellery Quarter emerged, it was due to the indirect result of the sale and following development in the mid-eighteenth century of the Colmore estate, on the north-western edge of the town.
The Colmore family lived in New Hall, a vast Jacobean house, set in acres of land on what is now the north-western corner of the junction of Great Charles Street, Queensway and Newhall Street.
In 1746 the Colmores had the restrictions lifted, by a private Act of Parliament, which prevented the sale of the estate, and the current grid-like pattern of the streets between Colmore Row and St Paul's Square were in place by the end of the century. The development of the surrounding properties was fairly irregular, despite the regularity of the street plan.

There was a mixture of large and small buildings, houses for the wealthy and houses lived in, by self-employed toy makers, who increasingly used the garrets or outbuildings as their own workshops.

In 1777 the area nearest to the town was moving down market, and Charles Colmore set about creating a higher class suburb, lower on down the hill by donating to the land and £1000 to build St Paul's Church in the middle of a stylish square.
The idea was the cash in on the demand for houses by expanding the prosperous middle class outside the industrial town, and he succeeded in doing so.

For more information visit the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter.