French Walls Legal Records

This lease was drawn up by Barker & Son and describes the terms by which Henry van Wart, Edward Bourne Lovell, Samuel Aspinwall Goddard, Edwin Verdon Blyth, George Jones and Charles Dean, all of Birmingham, rented French Walls from James Watt Jr. The yearly rent was specified as £925. The lease also contains the following schedules:

1. Buildings.
2. Fixed Machinery.
3. Patterns.
4. Fixtures in Foreman’s House, Porter’s Lodge, Counting House, Store Room, Carpenter’s Shop and Stable.
5. Furnaces and Stacks.
6. Cast Iron Flooring Plates and Guards for Walls.
7. Machinery and Tools at French Walls purchased from Mr. Downing’s Assignees and since added to by Mr. Watt as valued by Mr. Shenstone in January 1830.

The lease bears several pencil alterations, and was used as a draft for the new lease of the site to George Frederick Muntz in 1842.

More detailed information on each series is given in the Description field, while reference numbers and covering dates of the actual records, and a list of the old reference numbers will be found in the pdf of the full series list attached. Item level lists are available in the searchroom of Birmingham Archives and Heritage.

There are no restrictions on access to or use of the French Walls Legal Records.

The copy lease listed here is the one surviving legal record of French Walls, the iron and steel works in Smethwick owned by James Watt Jr.1 It records James Watt Jr.?s lease of the works to Henry van Wart and others, known as the Bordesley Steel Co., in 1833. The previous lessee of the works was Henry Downing who went bankrupt in 1829, with the result that the works reverted to James Watt Jr.For more information on the people and businesses mentioned in this Introduction, see The Guide to Persons & Firms in the Archives Searchroom.