Travel: seeking diamonds in Birmingham

As stones go, it looks quite ordinary, even though this felsite boulder was deposited during the Ice Age by a glacier. Yet, there is history here—in the listed red-brick buildings, once bustling factories, the century-old Chamberlain Clock, the ink in the Pen Museum, and hidden in the soft earth in Birmingham’s last Georgian Square. I get a brief lesson in the Quarter from Josie Wall, a PhD student, guide and part of the Jewellery Quarter Business Improvement, a company dedicated to improving the district. Along the way, Wall feeds me nuggets: Factories with “works” in the name were actually workshops; the steam from the pen factory was used for Turkish baths; census records show the Quarter had workers from South Africa, Australia, Trinidad and Russia; and the cemeteries are one of the few untouched open green spaces. “You don’t find too many people interested in hanging out in cemeteries,” she says.