Friday Photo: The New Standard Works

Today’s Friday photo(s) are from inside the Standard Works building on Vittoria street in the Jewellery Quarter. They were taken during a recent tour by the Ruskin Mill Trust, who had bought the grade II listed building after it having been disused for 20 years. The building itself was designed by Thomas F. Williams and constructed in the late 1870s. It started life as a multiple occupancy factory, which is reflected in its multiple new uses, keeping some manufacturing processes within the building. Some of the most prominent tradesmen on the site were silversmiths and jewellers and in 1900 the site finally became one single factory for silversmith D&L Spiers, known as the Standard Works. The building was later used during WWII as a bomb shelter, you could see the extra columns included for reinforcement still down in the basement. The Ruskin Mill Trust is refurbishing the building into a specialist further education college. The development will be known as ‘The New Standard Works’ and will also include amongst other things a community café, workshops and a roof top urban garden and bee colony. It was an interesting tour around the inside of the building and exciting to hear that the roof would soon be going on.