The start of the great Boulton andWatt business came in 1775 when Boulton, recognising the potential in James Watt’s development work on the steam engine, offered the Scottish engineer a partnership at Soho. Not long afterwards another inventive Scot, William Murdoch, joined them. The trio’s combination of brains, investment and enterprise was powerful. Boulton &Watt engines became the driving force behind much of the emergent Industrial Revolution, in Britain and later across the world.

In 1788, resolving to make life difficult for forgers, Matthew Boulton established his Soho Mint, producing high-quality coins and medals. Eventually he was awarded the contract to produce the British copper coinage, and between 1797-1799 alone, c.45 million pennies, two-penny pieces and halfpennies, designed by the leading European medallist, Küchler, were produced at the Soho Mint – an extraordinary leap in the mass-production of images. Boulton &Watt also re-equipped the Royal Mint and mints abroad.

In a crowded life, Boulton still found time for public office. He campaigned energetically for the establishment of Birmingham Assay Office in 1773, and served on committees which oversaw the development of the Birmingham Dispensary (which provided medicines and medical care for the poor) and the General Hospital. A lifelong Handel fan, he helped to promote the early music festivals, which were held in aid of the Hospital.

Determined to raise the tone of Birmingham’s cultural life, he chaired the committee which masterminded improvements to the theatre. He commissioned family portraits from some of the finest portrait painters of the age, and his son likened the Soho Manufactory to an art school, where promising apprentices received tuition in drawing and were encouraged to attend plays and exhibitions to develop their artistic sensibilities. In 1794 he served as High Sherriff of Staffordshire.