French Walls Miscellaneous Records

The notebooks contain a wide variety of information about French Walls sites. The first book dates from soon after Watt Jr. bought the site in 1816, and contains details of weights of various castings, notes on repairs needed for the houses, and also some colourful descriptions of the characters of prospective tenants. The second notebook simply contains details of the weights of parts of various engines cast at French Walls, while the third book contains an account of cash paid to workmen, receipt of rents, rough pencil sketches of the houses, lists of prospective tenants, and so on.

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 the access or use of the French Walls Miscellanous records. However fragile items or those in a poor state of repair may not be served at the discretion of the Duty Archivist.

The records listed here are various records relating to French Walls, the iron and steel works in Smethwick owned by James Watt Jr. There are three notebooks which contain several entries by James Watt Jr. on various matters of French Walls business, 1816 - 1822. There is also an engraving of the works as it appeared when tenanted by the Bordesley Steel Company (1833-1840).