Some extra information about James Baldwin & Sons: There were two Baldwin mills in Birmingham. Baldwin started his business in workshops on Newhall St, but built his first paper mill in Ladywood on Morville St (now Browning St) around 1836. Though the Baldwin’s mill building on Morville St/Browning St claims the business was established in 1829, that refers to the printing side of his work. The current building (now luxury flats) actually dates from 1908 (plans in the Library of Birmingham’s Wolfson Archive). This building was used intermittently as a paper mill and a printing works, before papermaking was moved away completely in 1972 to Oldbury.
Baldwin’s main products were brown and white grocery bags, and various types of gun wadding which were sold internationally.
The Sherborne Mill (note that a road adjacent to the original mill was Sherborne St, and its wharf on the Birmingham Canal was the Sherborne Wharf) was built by James Baldwin on part of his own Kings Norton estate. In 1926, this mill was sold by the family to a syndicate and it became an independent paper making firm, the Kings Norton Paper Mill Ltd, while the Baldwins concentrated their work back at the Birmingham site. The KNPM Ltd business closed in 1967. Much of the mill was demolished over subsequent decades but what remains is operated as a small business park. The Patrick Collection of vintage cars was housed in the main remaining mill building for a time. The site is not generally open to the public.
The Baldwin family firm, latterly known as James Baldwin (Cartons) Ltd, went into receivership in 1984.
Michelle Cale, ‘Ephemeral and Essential: The Development of the Paper Industry in Birmingham,’ The Local Historian, 51:2 (April 2021), 137-153. [Available online at the British Association for Local History website.]
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