William Mills (inventor) Kingdom at The Atlas Works, Bonnersfield. Monkwearmouth. Whilst here he produced some of Britain's earliest aluminium golf clubs: Patent, No 13545. known as Metallic Golfing Instrument Heads. He was a keen golfer and had joined the Wearside Golf Club in around 1892. Apart from his company in Sunderland, Mills also set up a company in Birmingham of the same name, which produced castings for the motor car and aircraft industries. Early in 1915, Mills opened the Mills Munitions Factory in Birmingham, making the Mills Bomb Hand Grenade. Until then, grenades had often proved as deadly to the thrower as to
History of trade and industry in Birmingham History of trade and industry in Birmingham Birmingham was a flourishing medieval market town. A settlement of Birmingham appears in Domesday Book, but there is nothing to indicate that it was anything but a rural manor. one of many in the area that had been subinfueded by William Fitz Osbern, Lord of Dudley. In lawsuits of 1285 and 1308 it was claimed that the Birmingham market has been held without interruption since before the Norman conquest. However no more contemporary evidence of such a market exists. The key moment in the transformation of Birmingham from the purely rural manor recorded