The Jewellery Quarter is an area of Birmingham, England. Situated in the south of the Hockley area of the city centre, there is a population of around 3,000 people in a 1.07-square-kilometre (264-acre) area.
The Jewellery Quarter is Europe's largest concentration of businesses involved in the jewellery trade, which produce 40% of all the jewellery made in the UK. It is also home to the world's largest Assay Office, which hallmarks around 12 million items a year. Historically the Jewellery Quarter has been the birthplace of many pioneering advancements in industrial technology. At its peak in the early 1900s the Jewellery Quarter employed over 30,000 people, however due to foreign competition and lack of demand, the industry declined throughout the 20th century. The area is now being transformed into an urban village and hub for creative businesses, whilst maintaining its urban fabric. Its historical importance has led to numerous conservation schemes and it is an Anchor Point of the European Route of Industrial Heritage.
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“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)