Coffin Works Museum

Many aspects of Birmingham’s industrial history are now illustrated in the city’s Jewellery Quarter. One of the most recent additions is the Coffin Works in Fleet Street, a three-storey factory  designed by Roger Hurley and completed in 1892. Two years later it was taken over by Alfred and Edwin Newman who had established the Newman Brothers company in another part of Birmingham in 1882. They manufactured coffin furniture, principally by making brass castings and by electro-plating forgings. The business was successful and products were exported to many countries.

The company ceased trading in 1998-99, but the last owner, Joyce Green, hoped to see it preserved and sold it in 2003 to Advantage West Midlands. After some vicissitudes, it passed in 2010 to the Birmingham Conservation Trust, which has restored it as a visitor attraction. Costumed guides lead tours around the time capsule factory, where the workshops are full of original stock and tools. Experience sights, sounds and smells of factory life, including machinery demonstrations. Hear stories about workers, owners and the trade; how Newman Brothers’ produced some of the world’s finest coffin furniture, including the fittings for the funerals of Winston Churchill and Princess Diana for over 100 years.