The Chance Heritage Trust

Glassmaking was introduced to Smethwick by Thomas Shutt, who started making crown window-glass on a site alongside the Birmingham Canal in 1814. When he died in 1822, his company was sold to Robert Lucas Chance, the business later changing its name from the British Crown Glass Co. to Chance Brothers. Employing French and Belgian workers, Chance began making sheet glass in 1832, the first company in England to do so. The firm supplied the glass used by Joseph Paxton for the Great Conservatory at Chatsworth, Derbyshire, in 1841; for London’s Crystal Palace, in 1851; and for the rebuilt Houses of Parliament in Westminster, in 1852. Chance Heritage Trust staff and volunteers, here holding a