The Coffin Works, based in the Jewellery Quarter, has been awarded a prestigious Engineering Heritage Award from Institution of Mechanical Engineering (IMechE). The accolade places the Victorian Birmingham manufactory alongside engineering royalty across the world
The awards ceremony took place on Wednesday 25th March at the Coffin Works.
This honour puts Coffin Works in exceptional company, with previous winners including Concorde, the Jaguar E‑Type, the Old Coalbrookdale Ironworks and the Thames Barrier. They are sites recognised not only for their unique engineering heritage, but also for their lasting cultural impact.
The Newman Brothers’ Manufactory is one of the most complete surviving historic factories in the Jewellery Quarter, evoking a bygone industrial world, with its original workshops, drop stamps and fly presses, as well as thousands of dies. But although large scale manufacturing in the factory has long gone, the team are keeping the skills alive through operating the original machinery for the public.
The Coffin Works is being recognised as an exemplary site on account of this.
Visitors don’t have to imagine how the machinery functioned; they can see it, hear it and feel it for themselves. But more than that the award demonstrates how staff and volunteers are at the helm of this in making its manufacturing history accessible through visits to the museum.
To qualify for a Heritage Award, a site must demonstrate that it is one of the following:
- First of a kind
- Last of a kind
- Oldest in existence
- Only surviving example
Coffin Works proudly meets three of these four criteria. While it was not the first purpose‑built coffin furniture manufactory, it is the last of its kind in the UK, the oldest in existence, and the only surviving example of its type.
But the museum is more than a time capsule, it is a community museum about people, stories and objects with engineering at its heart.
Sarah Hayes, Museum and Trust Director said:
“Our museum also provides a space for people to embrace nostalgia. This is through the everyday machinery and industrial aroma of our Stamp Shop, evidenced by the consistent remark that people make as they walk through the door that it ‘smells like their dad’s shed’. Or the conversations triggered by the sewing machines in the Shroud Room, in which visitors share stories about how their mothers or grandmothers used to make their clothes. Our collection has the power to comfort as well as inform and it embodies the heart and power of heritage.”
Benjamin Parker, Chair of Trustees said:
“Coffin Works has always been about community; the workers who built its legacy, the volunteers who protect it, and the visitors who continue to be inspired by it. To be recognised at this level pays tribute to the wonderful team who make all of this possible”.
The Coffin Works has won an award every year since it opened in 2014, including the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service in 2019, as well as being named ‘Best unusual Museum’ in the UK by Lonely Planet.
The museum extends its thanks to IMechE, the Heritage Committee judges for awarding us this prestigious accolade and recognising us as the first purpose-built manufactory to have secured the award.
