Birmingham History

Human History Collection

The collection reflects the history of the people and city of Birmingham from around 1500 to the present. It includes material relating to work, trades and industries, domestic and personal life, and community life as well as personal items associated with political figures such as Joseph Chamberlain. We’ve collected objects by gift, donation, and purchases from the 1950s, but we’ve been developing the collection through projects including Millennibrum (2000) and Collecting Birmingham (2015-18), allowing it to better reflect and engage the city’s super-diverse population.

Birmingham History is a unique collection of national and international significance which reflects Birmingham’s globally important history. The collection includes a wide-ranging and rich resource of material culture and oral testimonies which contribute to our understanding, whilst also retaining a strong relevance to the people of Birmingham.

Image gallery

  • Metal tray painted with a 19th century street scene with a church in the background
  • Old paper booklet advertising bus service travelling around Birmingham
  • Black and white photograph of a city street full of people on the pavements, two cars drive down a road in the centre
  • Group of 18 fancy mother-of-pearl buttons
  • Metal traydecorated with a landscape painting showing crowds of people looking at a hot air balloon ascending
  • Very ornate silver box sitting on a plinth featuring four silver figures, glass columns and enamelled pictures of various scenes
  • Piece of loosely woven cloth with a pattern picked out in small stitches using coloured threads
  • Piece of loosely woven cloth with a pattern picked out in small stitches using coloured threads
  • Four small pointed gold-coloured pieces of metal with box
  • Small printed cardboard box with a pen nib on the top, below is a fanned arrangement of pointed metal pen nibs
  • Piece of metal, pointed at one end, shaped to resemble a giant pen nib
  • Rectangular wooden tray divided into five rows filled with round metal boxes, some have numbers painted on them in red
  • A pottery jug with handle and spout. It is white and decorated with a painted portrait and script
  • 36 different fancy buttons attached to a card in the shape of a shield
  • Eight-sided ceramic plate with black outline drawings of two people and a building
  • Large cloth banner there is a blindfoled woman pictured in the middle holding a sword and scales surrounded by coats-of-arms
  • Metal sphere with a heraldic lion in relief, there is a triangular flat part on the top with a hole
  • Large cloth banner with an appiled pattern in fabric of coat of arms surrounded by leaves above a silhouette of a city skyline with the words Birmingham and Justice and Liberty
  • Postcard showing a photographic montage of an image of a canal with boats superimposed over a photo of a civic buliding with columns and a clock tower
  • Black and white postcard with a photo montage image of portraits of seven men in suits
  • Small cloth toy formed to resenble a bear