The Custard Factory, Digbeth: a guide
Bird's built it to make custard. Since 1992 it has made Digbeth: around 400 small businesses, a pool that gets drained for raves, a 12 metre Green Man on Gibb Street and Birmingham's oldest pub claim round the corner.
By Only Birmingham Editorial
The Custard Factory is on Gibb Street in Digbeth, B9, off the High Street at Deritend. Go in daylight to see the studios and the courtyard, and at night for everything else. It is the building that made Digbeth what it is: around 400 small businesses under one set of Crittall windows, in the district a 2018 Sunday Times survey named the coolest neighbourhood in Britain. We could have told them.
The custard
Alfred Bird invented egg-free custard in the 19th century. His son, Sir Alfred Frederick Bird, built the works, and according to the Digbeth estate it opened to produce Bird's Custard in 1906. The original Crittall windows, the exposed steel and the high ceilings are all still there. Bird's moved production to Banbury in 1964, and the building did what Digbeth's factories did in those decades: it emptied.
The reinvention
In January 1992, Bennie Gray started turning it into studios, with an £800,000 City Grant, and his son Lucan Gray carried it on. The first phase gave 145 units to artists, designers and anyone who could make a living from a desk and an idea, originally with a cafe and a record and clothes shop on the ground floor and a 220-seat theatre. The second phase, around Gibb Square, was finished in 2002: restaurants and shops round a pool in the old loading bay, which gets drained now and then so people can dance in it. Then came Zellig, the restored Grade II listed Devonshire House, opened in May 2010 with another 100 units.
Over the years the tenant list has included Huel, Maverick Television, The Gadget Show, Codemasters and ASOS. Oval has run the wider Digbeth estate since 2017, alongside the Bond, Fazeley Studios, Tubeworks and the seven-storey Greenhouse.
That is the Digbeth trick in one building: nobody knocked it down. The steel, the windows and the loading bay were reused rather than replaced, and the same approach has since spread down the street to the Bond, Fazeley Studios and the old tube works.
What to look at
- The Green Man. A 12 metre figure of stone and planting by Tawny Gray, looking down over Gibb Street. You cannot miss it, and you should not try.
- Deluge. Toin Adams's sculpture at Zellig.
- The viaduct. The old Duddeston Viaduct runs past the top floors. The estate plans to turn it into Viaduct Park, a public sky park.
What to do
The Custard Factory is still mostly a place where people work, so treat the offices as offices. But the building has a cinema, a coffee shop and a barber, and it hosts fairs, festivals, gigs and events through the year. In the old works on Gibb Street is Golf Fang, a bar with 18 holes of crazy golf, darts, an arcade, pool and karaoke rooms. It is strictly over 18s, operates Challenge 25, and opens in the afternoon on weekdays and from midday on Saturdays.
The Old Crown, round the corner
Next door at Deritend is the Old Crown, which looks over the estate's Greenhouse building. The pub claims to date from 1368. Historians reckon it was more likely built between 1450 and 1500, with the first record of it as an inn in 1626, which still makes it one of the oldest secular buildings in Birmingham and Grade II* listed. Have a pint in a building older than the custard by about four centuries.
Digbeth around it
The Custard Factory sits at the heart of the city's creative quarter. The Typhoo factory, the other great Digbeth works, is where the BBC said in 2022 it would move its Birmingham operations. Digbeth is also the home of the city's Irish community, and the St Patrick's Day parade has run through it since 1996. HS2's Curzon Street station is planned close by, with a Metro stop on Digbeth High Street.
Getting there
Moor Street and New Street are both within walking distance of Gibb Street, Moor Street the closer of the two. Head for the High Street at Deritend and look for the Green Man. If you are coming by canal, the Digbeth Branch ends at Warwick Bar, behind the old Proof House, a short walk away.
When to go
Weekday daytime is for the studios, the street art and a coffee, when the courtyard is quiet. Friday and Saturday nights are for Golf Fang and the bars and venues of Digbeth around it. On St Patrick's weekend the whole of Digbeth turns out for the parade. Bring a coat.
