An historic Birmingham silverware company, which was facing closure, has been rescued by English Heritage to preserve a piece of Birmingham’s industrial history. Victoria Farncombe reports.

Tony Evans has a quick furtive look around before whipping out a cloth and giving his table a wipe.

“Don’t let English Heritage see,” he chuckles, plonking his bottom on the newly cleaned desk. “They’re very proud of their dust.”

We’re sitting in Tony’s former office at JW Evans, in Albion Street – a silverware workshop turned museum.

With a swivel chair in brown upholstery, dirty cream walls and a light shade straight out of The Avengers, the third floor office is a relic from the 1960s.

But it’s the rooms downstairs which excited English Heritage enough to buy and preserve the crumbling factory.

Founded in 1881 by artist and die sinker Jenkins Evans, JW Evans created silverware that graced the finest dining tables of the British Empire. Its candlesticks, cigarette boxes and soup tureens were once sold in top quality London shops like Aspreys and Garrards.

Towards the end of its life span, the family firm was one of the last remaining examples of a business which made Birmingham famous across the world.

In its heyday before the First World War, more than 40 people were employed at JW Evans. Business was still strong through the Silver Jubilee year of 1977.

But by 2005, the company was in financial trouble due to lack of demand for fine silverware and competition from cheaper outfits in South East Asia.

Resigned to retiring and selling up the business his grandfather had founded, Tony was delighted when English Heritage (EH) stepped in to rescue it.

“The alternative would have been for the firm to close down. The contents would have been dispersed and that would have been rather sad,” he said. “For English Heritage to come along and take it over is very gratifying.”

What excited English Heritage when it first saw the factory was that the family had kept absolutely everything.

EH conservator Beth Stanley said: “When we first walked into the building it was like entering a lost world. Everything was still here – workshops packed with machinery, tools and equipment piled up on every workbench, every wall covered with racks of steel dies. Even the pictures of football teams over the employees’ workbenches were intact.