6, LEGGE LANE

Details

BIRMINGHAM

997/0/10328 LEGGE LANE 09-OCT-01 6

GV II Works, formerly terrace of 4 houses with attached workshops, unused and boarded up at time of inspection. (September 2000). 1885, with late C20 alterations. By William Tadman Foulkes, architect, for Bishton and Fletcher, jewellery manufacturers. Red brick with stone dressings and blue brick detailing, truncated mid-slope chimneys and a slate roof covering.
PLAN: A development of 2 pairs of houses with attached workshop ranges enclosing 2 sub-divided rear courtyards on an irregularly-shaped plot with a curved frontage onto Legge Lane.
EXTERIOR: Legge Lane elevation of 6 bays and 3 storeys, formerly with doorways to bays 2 and 5, and 3-light windows to the remaining bays, now with alterations to enlarge or reduce openings, including the left-hand bay, now enlarged to from a double doorway beneath a shallow concrete lintel. The pattern of openings to the upper floors has not been disrupted, with wide openings to bays 1,3,4 and 6, and narrow windows above doorways . Moulded cill and lintel bands delineate storeys, and shallow brick pilasters define the differing bay widths. Decorative brick eaves above second floor lintels. Extending from the rear walls are 3 storey workshop ranges, with a back-to back range to the centre below a pitched roof, and monopitch- roofed ranges to the sides. These are of 5, 6 and 7 bays, with shallow arch headed windows to ground and first floors and flat -headed openings to the third floors. Ridge and rear wall chimney stacks from the workshop hearths. Grouped door openings provided access to domestic rear kitchens and workshops.
INTERIORS: Not inspected.
HISTORY: This complex of houses with attached workshops appears to have been a speculative development by Bishton and Fletcher of Standard Works , located on Albion Street to the north. The development provided domestic accommodation with integral offices, the latter sited above the rear kitchens and having access to a rear stair dividing the domestic accommodation from the workshop facilities. Access to the houses was by means of doorways from the 2 shared passages, which continued into the divided rear courtyards.
A speculative development of houses with purpose-built attached workshop ranges of 1885, apparently intended for small manufacturers wishing to live close by their workshops. A planned example of the combined dwelling and workshop tradition, originally based on the conversion of domestic premises in the early C19, and a distinctive building type found in this specialist manufacturing district of Birnmingham, now recognised as being of international significance.

Legacy

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488116

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