Seeking diamonds in BIRMINGHAM

In the Jewellery Quarter, you will find stories of industry and trade, and of women fighting to change history

As stones go, it looks quite ordinary, even though this felsite boulder was deposited during the Ice Age by a glacier. Once a boundary stone, the War Stone now lies on a plinth inside a cemetery on a street named after it. Legend has it that two giants got into a fight and the Birmingham giant was hit by a large boulder that killed him and destroyed his castle. In his honour, his followers erected a stone in the lane. Hence the name War Stone.

In Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter, even the rocks tell a story. Once an industrial town manufacturing metal products (pens, chains, coins, whistles, coffin parts, trophies), it was home to traders working on every stage of the jewellery manufacturing process. The Great Depression and World War II saw a decline in industry but it still has about 700 jewellery-linked businesses producing 40% of the jewellery made in the UK.

The conservation of the Quarter has turned it into a space for creative business and hospitality ventures. Yet, there is history here in the listed red-brick buildings, once bustling factories, the centuryold Chamberlain Clock, the ink in the Pen Museum (the area once produced 75% of pens in the world), and hidden in the soft earth in Birmingham's last Georgian Square. St Paul's Square is lush with autumn foliage, a shaded courtyard with old tombstones and memorials, and, in the centre, the 18th century St Paul's Church, with its stained-glass windows.