Pen Museum, Birmingham

Outings

Pen Museum, Birmingham

As part of the Conference weekend in February 2026, we visited the Jewellery Quarter in central Birmingham for a guided tour of The Pen Museum. It is a very worthwhile place to visit, and Huw Jones the Museum Manager should be thanked for his splendid tour.

We were first taken out onto the street to view the magnificent building and see the contrast in design between it and surrounding buildings. We then viewed the building from the inner courtyard, where Huw pointed out where a row of windows was slightly mismatched after being replaced after being bombed during the war. There was a very interesting tour of the museum housed on the ground floor of the factory building. Following this, great fun was had when we all tried our hands at making a pen nib, using three of the different machines used in the process. For us it was quite a slow process, but as women who worked there in Victorian times, were paid by “The Lot” some could produce 18,000! These days modern health and safety rules would apply, but in that period it was deemed the employee’s problem if they were injured.

penmuseum.org.uk