X-Nico

4 unusual facts about Newhall Street


Birmingham Assay Office

The Birmingham Assay Office moved from the pub in 1815 to its own offices at Little Cannon Street and then moved to its current home on Newhall Street in the Jewellery Quarter in 1877, and is now the largest Assay Office in Europe, hallmarking 13 million articles in 2003.

Birmingham pen trade

In Newhall Street, John Mitchell manufactured pens; he pioneered mass production of steel pens (prior to this, the quill pen was the most common form of writing instrument).

Days of May

In 1819 a crowd of 15,000 had gathered at Newhall Hill in Birmingham to symbolically elect Charles Wolsley as the town's "Legislatorial Attorney and Representative" in Westminster; when Manchester followed Birmingham's lead two months later troops opened fire and killed 15 in the event that became known as the Peterloo Massacre.

The BPU had made its reputation amid the spontaneous rioting that had accompanied the fall of the First Reform Bill in 1831, assembling 150,000 protesters at Newhall Hill in the largest political assembly the country had ever seen.


Edmund Street

Edmund Street is one of a series of roads on the old Colmore Estate which originally stretched from Temple Row in the city centre, around St Phillip's Cathedral, to the northern end of Newhall Street.


see also

Edmund Street

This building is on the corner of Newhall Street and its current postal address is 17 & 19 Newhall Street.