The JW Evans silver factory is like the land that time forgot.

Based in a rabbit warren Victorian terrace in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, the heavy machinery is rusted and covered in cobwebs and buckets collect the rainwater as it drips through the leaking roof.

The factory, in all its faded Victorian splendour, was still in use up to a year ago and while the staff have now left and the thud of the silver stamps have fallen silent, it is set to be preserved for generations to come.

Next week English Heritage will start their £750,000 project to turn the factory into a museum.

It is hoped it will be an exact replica of how it was in his working heyday.

The essential repairs to the building will take place around the bowing shelves and the covered workbenches which carry an estimated 55,000 pieces of machinery, tools and dyes.

Everything will be restored, even the decades worth of dust that has settled.

Beth Stanley, the project’s conservator, said: “We are going to have to cover everything and protect it whilst the builders are in. It makes it a lot more difficult but it means that everything will be kept exactly how it is now, which is the charm of the place. We don’t want to empty it, catalogue everything and then put it all back in because it would lose some of the disorder.” Opened in 1880 by Jenkin Evans, the business has been run by four generations of the same family, making everything from ornate tableware and candelabras to decorative labels for decanters.

But a decline in the silverware trade saw manufacturing trail off until the staff were finally made redundant in 2005.

Its last owner Tony Evans is working as a consultant on the project and he has kept a wealth of paperwork, sketches and designs and thousands of dyes that are stacked on dark shelves through every room.

Project historian Nick Molyneux added: “We have all the paperwork, about how much people got paid, debtors and creditors records. We’ve not only got some fantastic old pictures but we’ve also got the camera which took them.” One of the best finds so far is a decaying pantograph, a specialist machine which produces small and intricate designs needed for the dyes to stamp out silver products.

Unused since the 1940s and in very poor condition, the Keller Pantograph was bought in New York in 1904 for £600 and was a major investment at the time.

The machine was cutting edge technology for its day and JW Evans became the sole European agent for the American firm.

Still hanging on a nail in the workshop two old notebooks detail the complete working life of the machine.

The building work is expected to be finished in January 2010 when work will then begin on the inside. It is hoped that pre-booked groups will be able to tour the building whilst the work is under way.