52. Charles and Eliza Brittain of Birmingham

Charles Edward Brittain was born in 1839 in Aston, Birmingham. His parents were Charles and Maria Brittain. In 1861, he was at home in Birmingham, and a commercial clerk.

Eliza Meaden Meaden was born in 1840 in St Pancras, Middlesex. Her parents were David and Eliza Meaden.

Charles and Eliza were married in 1866 at All Saints, Hockley, Birmingham.

They had six children:

• 58.2.1 - Eliza Maria (Lilly) Brittain (1867)
• 58.2.2 - Mabel Kate (May) Brittain (1869)
• 58.2.3 - Alice Gertrude Brittain (1870)
• 58.2.4 - (Charles) Frederick Meaden Brittain (1873)
• 58.2.5 - Margaret Constance (Daisy) Brittain (1875)
• 58.2.6 - William Edward Brittain (1877)

More on these individuals in Chapter 58.

In 1871, Charles was a glass works manager, and they live in Clifton Road, Erdington. In 1881, he has the same job, and they are living at 20 Sutton Street, Aston Manor (Sutton Street has been redeveloped as a modern housing estate). In 1888, he is recorded as a freemason. Noticeably, several of the Charles' neighbours when he was at home were glass makers.

In 1881, Charles snr lives three doors down from Thomas Walker's glassworks on Lodge Road. Grace's Guide has notes on this 'Vesta' Glassworks (formerly of Walsh & Walsh), and there is more here, including a picture of the site towered over by a glass 'cone'. Apparently, they specialised in delicate cut glass and vases, lampshades etc. There is more. Allegedly, the site was later taken over by the Ford secret development of the Thames Trader!

In 1891, Charles was a glass manufacturer, and an employer. They live at 192 Trinity Road, Aston Manor. Unless it has been renumbered, this site has also been redeveloped. One side of Trinity Road is Aston Hall.

Aston Hall (credit)

The other side of Trinity Road is Villa Park, home of Aston Villa FC, established - as the signs and motto declare - in 1874. The Holte End was rebuilt in the 1990s in a style designed to evoke the spirit of the original.

Holte End, Villa Park (Ell Brown)

The nearby Holte Hotel would also have been familiar.

Holte Hotel, Aston (Ell Brown)

In 1896, Kelly's has him at 100 Victoria Road, Aston, which is an unextravagant house (if the street hasn't been renumbered), the other side of Aston Park. In 1901, they were at 35 Aston Lane (also now redeveloped). These addresses were all a couple of miles from work, it turns out. (It is also only a couple of miles from where the Barnes family were living in Duddeston, but only geographically.)

Eliza died in 1907. There is a family story that Charles remarried, thus disinheriting his family. "She wouldn't even give the family one piece of glass from the factory." But I can't find a record of this marriage. Charles died in 1910. Update: Charles left £390 of effects in his will (about £32,000 in modern money, so no fortune); his widow was Catherine.

There is another story that we are related to the once-upon-a-time owners of HP Sauce, and had once stood to inherit from that side of the family too. I spent a lot of time looking into the history of Edwin Samson Moore, who originally purchased the rights to the sauce, and industrialised its production in Aston Cross in 1899. Moore supplied the vinegar, and was probably an agent for the spice merchant, to the grocer Frederick Garton, who had made small batches on the sauce in Nottingham. It was a good time to be in vinegar - fish and chips were invented in 1866! Pickles had been added in the 1880s and Moore was eager to find new lines. Moore's supplier of malt had been the adjacent Ansells Brewery, another fixture in Aston Cross from 1858 until the 1980s. More on Aston Cross here.

More recently, I have found a book by Nigel Britton who is the gt-gt grandson of Moore, and he confirms his relationship with Britton's cycle pumps, Britain's toy farms and soldiers, and with Fern Britton, the actress. He's from Sutton Coldfield, and his ancestor's spectacle frame works was right near the Belmont Glassworks. Edward would have had to pass Moore's vinegar brewery on Upper Thomas St (now subservient to the Aston Expressway) on his way to work. It was built in 1875, and claimed to be the largest vinegar brewery in the world. Villa's first captain worked at the brewery. 

It was Nigel's grandfather, William Stanley Britton who married Vera Eastwood. She was a relative of Thomas Telford, and of the owners of the huge Eastwood Carriage Works in Chesterfield; and Moore's granddaughter. But this was not until 1931, and we are not close relatives of Nigel's family. By then, Moore had retired, the company had been sold, and then floated as a public company, in 1925. He had ten children, of whom at least seven had children of their own (surnames Moore, Antrobus, Eastwood, Heap, Jolly, Pilkington and Owen) where there could have been a connexion, given that the families are likely to have moved in the same circles.

So, back to glass. Such was the hold of neighbouring Stourbridge (some 13 miles to the west) and its local raw materials on the trade, that it took 150 years for glass-making to arrive in Birmingham. Initially the trade began in Snow Hill in 1762 where raw materials for glass were made, and also glass toys. Of the five most important glass houses established around the turn of the C19 was the Belmont Glass Works, founded by the Harris and Hawkes families in about 1810, probably on the site of a pottery works. Around another dozen smaller glass works have also been identified. Their presence was due to the coming of the canals, and to growing demand for specialist glass, possibly including beer and vinegar works! 

What alerted me to the Belmont Works was a notice from the London Gazette in 1892:

NOTICE is hereby given, that the Partnership heretofore subsisting between the undersigned, Arthur William Robinson, Charles Edward Brittain, and Frederick John Fairbairns, as Glass Manufacturers, at the Belmont Glass Works, Birmingham, under the style or firm of Wm. Gammon and Co., has been this day dissolved and determined.—Dated this llth day of January, 1892. 

I had already noticed the site, or rather the derelict remaining building on the plot, the old Eccles Cycle and Rubber Works, later used for pianos, bedsteads and knickers.

Belmont Row 2012 (my photo, Ell has a better one)

Digging a bit more, I found an archaeological assessment carried out on behalf of the City Council.

"...the remains of the Belmont Glassworks, also on the north eastern side of the branch canal, originally built in 1815 by Thomas and John Harris, making plain and cut glass. These glassworks incorporated the earlier Belmont Row Glassworks (south west of the branch canal); which had been established in 1812."

"Three glass cones are shown on a site map of about 1855, by which time the works occupied both sides of the canal. One of the glassworks' boundary walls is still visible. Excavations revealed part of one of the cones and remains of other glassworks buildings marked on the 1855 map, together with a circular brick structure which was probably an earlier glass cone, that had gone out of use before 1855."

Site of Belmont Glassworks (roughly the area I have shaded red - incorporating Belmont Row glassworks to the SW.
Top left is Aston University (see also Street View from the road junction to NE).

I've found a contemporary picture of what is one of those cones, or another close by.

Birmingham Glassworks, 1800s (my collection)

A bit of searching on the Gammon name revealed expert comment on forums like this one. By 1845 the site was owned by William Gammon & Son. William died in 1841: the son was Thomas. He operated as the Works (1849 - 1852)  as a "very early manufacturer of pressed [i.e. moulded] domestic glassware (5 designs registered, 1849 to 1852)".  Work at the site varied from plain to 'flint' crystal glass and from complex early, partially pressed designs, to cheap mass-produced stuff.

I found a pickle jar made at the Belmont Works! 

Pickle Jar by William Gammon & Son (Belmont Glass Works)

The last vestiges of the Belmont site were cleared in 2019 in preparation for the erection of a 37-storey tower in the new mixed use 'Eastside Locks' development. The Belmont Row factory is also being restored. I see that another development called 'Glasswater Locks' is also now planned for a plot across the road, allegedly incorporating historic glassworks (Belmont Row?) and the canal (an extension basin?). 

I've found a hint that Charles carried on after the dissolution of his partnership at Belmont. "C E Brittain & Co. 35 Aston Village - Glass works".

Next (Charles' siblings)