Custard Factory
The Custard Factory is an independent shopping destination and creative and digital business workspace location in Digbeth Birmingham, England (grid reference SP078864).
Located on the site of what was the Bird's Custard factory in the industrial district of Digbeth, it is now home to a thriving working community of creative & digital businesses, independent shops and cafes and bars. They include hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses and some larger ones like Asos. The project was set up by Bennie Gray in 1992 and substantially expanded by his son Lucan Gray, who owns and runs the project.
The Custard Factory complex is set in fifteen acres (60,000 m²) of factory buildings, originally constructed by Sir Alfred Frederick Bird (1849–1922), the son of Alfred Bird (1811–1878), the inventor of egg-free instant custard. The architectural firm commissioned to design the building was Hamblins. The architect may have been Augustus William Brenchley Macer-Wright who married Ellen Kate Hamblin, known as Jenny, who was the daughter of the man behind the Architect Firm's name. There is no positive evidence in Birmingham City Archive. At one time, a thousand people worked there.
After the Bird company's departure to Banbury in 1964, the buildings were redeveloped from 1992, in two initial phases. The architect for the redevelopment project was Birmingham-based Glenn Howells Architects. The redevelopment of the Custard Factory began in January 1992 when the project was given £800,000 as a City Grant Award. This public sector funding levered in £1.6 million of private sector investment for the refurbishment of 100,000 sq ft (9,300 m2) of redundant buildings, providing 145 units for use by artists, designers and communicators. The first phase created around 300 jobs, half of which were previously unemployed. By the completion of the Custard Factory project, it is anticipated that a total of 1,000 jobs will be created.
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