Little Stairways With Surprises at the Top: a Visit to Fleet Street, August 1953
A Drab Thoroughfare with a Glamorous Name Street of Opportunity A Visit to Fleet Street Birmingham by Tudor Jones, 4th August 1953 In London, the name spells adventure: here it is synonymous with the enterprise that has sent Birmingham wares, famous for their quality, all over the world. Fleet Street: the “street of adventure” […]
Temporary closure updates at the Coffin Works Museum
Following the Government’s advice to avoid all non-essential contact we have taken the decision to close the Coffin Works to the public from Wednesday 18th March until Monday 1st June when we will review the situation. To clarify, the offices will re-open on 1st June, but we will not re-open to the public until 3rd June, […]
The Evolution of the English Shroud: from single sheet to draw-strings and sleeves
Two years ago I wrote about the evolution of the coffin in a blog entitled ‘From Coffins to Caskets: an American History’, so two years on it seems timely to explore its close relative, the shroud. After all, as the coffin became more elaborate, so too did the shroud. That’s to say that the stimulus […]
A Poem of a Review! Ghost Stories For Christmas
What a Joy, what a pleasure, a wonderful treat to visit the Coffin Works on old Brum’s Fleet Street Newman Brother’s factory, the place to be Ghost Stories for Christmas I wanted to see Don’t Go in the Cellar, a great ‘the-at-re’ show in the dark as we watched enthralled…they provided the spark! On a […]
Review: Pandemonium of Poe
What can I say about the Pandemonium of Poe, other than the production by the Don’t Go in the Cellar theatre company in early November was simply superb! The performance given by Jonathan Goodwin, its creative director was both a pleasure and at times spine tingling. He created several characters which took us the darker […]
Origins of Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter
The stage was set for the arrival of the coffin furniture trade in Birmingham as early as the first quarter of the eighteenth century, when the leather and textile trades which had dominated Birmingham’s early industrial history gave way to the metalworking industry. The rapid growth of coal mining and iron manufacturing in South […]
From Coffins to Caskets: An American History
[vc_row type=”in_container” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” overlay_strength=”0.3″][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ width=”1/1″][vc_column_text] What’s the difference between a coffin and a casket? It’s a question I’d never entertained before working at Newman Brothers Coffin Works, but that’s the question we pose to all our visitors on our guided tours. Although the answer seems very obvious to me, nine […]
A Successful Placement!
Ellie began volunteering with us in April 2017, as part of her University of Birmingham MA placement in International Heritage Management. The placement was six weeks in total and involved documenting part of the Newman Brothers’ collection. Perhaps the most impressive quality about Ellie was her clear passion for documentation and her astute understanding […]
From Coffins to Caskets: an American History
What’s the difference between a coffin and a casket? It’s a question I’d never entertained before working at Newman Brothers Coffin Works, but that’s the question we pose to all our visitors on our guided tours. Although the answer seems very obvious to me, nine times out of ten when I ask a group, I’m […]
If special widths are required…an extra will be charged – a brief history of the shroud.
‘If special widths are required, as used in Scotland and Ireland, an extra will be charged’. Those words grace the page of a Newman Brothers’ catalogue, dating from the 1920s, in which ‘robes’ are advertised. Robes in this instance refers to funerary gowns or shrouds. These words have puzzled us at Newman Brothers for a […]
Penny Dreadful! Or, Mrs Lovett’s Revenge!
Yet another performance from ‘Don’t Go into the Cellar – Victorian theatre with bite! There are chills and chuckles in abundance with this original one-woman show featuring Sweeney Todd’s partner in crime, Mrs Lovett! Be appalled by a plethora of other grotesque characters from the cheap and grisly pages of the Victorian era’s penny dreadful […]
“By the Gains of Industry” Birmingham Museums & Heritage at Risk
Donna Taylor is a doctoral researcher at the University of Birmingham. She is currently writing a thesis on the origins of Birmingham Town Council and is owner of the blog ‘Notes from Nineteenth-Century Birmingham’. On July 19th 1881 Mayor Richard Chamberlain laid the foundation stone of Birmingham’s first municipal art gallery and museum. It […]
