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The Soho Manufactory (grid reference SP051890), not to be confused with the Soho Foundry, was an early factory which pioneered mass production on the assembly line principle, in Soho, Birmingham, England.
The factory was established by the toy manufacturer Matthew Boulton and his business partner John Fothergill. In 1761, they leased a site on Handsworth Heath, containing a cottage and a water-driven metal-rolling mill. The mill was replaced by a new factory, designed and built by the Wyatt family of Lichfield, and completed in 1766. The cottage was later demolished and Boulton's home (Soho House) was built on the site, also by the Wyatts.
The Manufactory produced a wide range of goods from buttons, buckles and boxes to japanned ware (collectively caled toys), and later luxury products such as silverware and ormolu (a type of gilded bronze). It was also home to the first steam-powered mint, whose presses were subsequently used at the first Birmingham Mint
In later years, the Manufactory was served by canal at Soho Wharf, at the end of the short Soho Branch of the Birmingham Canal Navigations' Soho Branch Loop Line.
The manufactory was demolished in the middle of the 19th century and the site used for housing. In the 1990s the television archaeology programme Time Team excavated the foundations, in some of the local back gardens.
See also
References
A History of Birmingham, Chris Upton, 1993, ISBN 0-85033-870-0
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