Photo: Wehwalt · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Soho House

Georgian home of the industrialist Matthew Boulton in Handsworth and meeting place of the Lunar Society, currently open only for occasional guided tours.

Temporarily closed

Website Directions

Soho HouseTemporarily closed

Website

Temporarily closed. The house is not open to general visitors; the museum cites ongoing maintenance problems. Guided tours are offered occasionally with limited availability and must be booked in advance.

About the museum

Soho House in Handsworth was the home of the industrialist and entrepreneur Matthew Boulton from 1766 until his death in 1809. It began as a small farmhouse, which Boulton enlarged and altered over about fifty years while he developed the nearby Soho Manufactory, where he and James Watt worked on the steam engine. The architects Samuel and James Wyatt extended the house and designed the large dining room between 1789 and 1796.

The house was a favourite meeting place of the Lunar Society, a group of scientists, thinkers and industrialists that included Joseph Priestley, Erasmus Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood, James Watt and William Withering. The members met monthly around the full moon to dine, experiment and discuss ideas. The house is said to have had central heating, a steam-heated bath and indoor flushing toilets, which were rare at the time.

After Boulton's family sold the house in 1850 it passed through several owners and was for a time a residential hostel for police officers. Birmingham City Council bought it in 1990 and opened it as a museum in 1995. Birmingham Museums Trust has run it since 2012. The restored rooms show late Georgian taste and products of Boulton's factory such as buttons, buckles, clocks, vases and silver. Only a small part of the original estate survives, including a reconstruction of the garden retreat called the Hermitage.