I'm not sure if you can say the Crystal Palace was made in Birmingham. The general contractors for the original building were Fox Henderson, (until 1845, Bramah, Fox & Co), who had an ironworks in Cranford Street, Smethwick which was rapidly being expanded in the late 1840s to cater for massive railway contracts. During 1850, Joseph Paxton (a director of the Midland Railway) got in touch with Charles Fox about producing a Crystal Palace in cast iron and glass, rather than in brick and stone. Miraculously, Fox & Henderson designed and built all the cast ironwork at their new London Works, sub-letting the glass manufacture and supply to Chance Brothers, of Spon Lane, West Smethwick. Within nine months, the Crystal Palace in London was opened.
It's a marvellous story of enterprise and initiative, but you can't really say Birmingham comes into it.
According to the Victoria County History of Staffordshire, "in 1850 the London Works was described as 'the finest and most compact range of [industrial] buildings in South Staffordshire'. It had been expanded to form a hollow square, in the centre of which stood the boiler-house with its two 75 h.p. engines. The smiths' shop contained 70 forges and was stated to be the largest in the world. The firm was then producing about 300 tons of castings a week and usually had between 800 and 1,200 men working at Smethwick. At the height of its success it was the town's principal employer of labour, and when it failed in 1856 some 2,000 people were thrown out of work."
So although Smethwick can justly be proud of the achievements, the people deserve sympathy for what they suffered.
Peter
