Small Heath Lower School, Learning Zone

House, 1892, by Martin and Chamberlain, for the Birmingham School Board. Built as a master's or caretaker's house, for Waverley Road School, now Small Heath Lower School, which stands immediately to the east. The house faces south-east, towards the school yard.

MATERIALS: Red brick, with terracotta and cut and moulded brick dressings. The roof is tiled, with decorative ridge-tiles, and there are tall brick stacks with terracotta elements. The house retains its original timber windows with sash frames, the upper frames having multiple panes.

EXTERIOR: A two-storey, two-bay building, each bay being topped by a gable. The upper parts of the building are decorated with a ribbed terracotta moulding. The projecting left-hand bay has a two-storey canted bay window, with a tiled hood to the upper window, and tiled off-set above the lower window. The right-hand bay has a segmental-arched window to the ground floor, and a flat-arched first-floor window, above which is a terracotta lunette, with blind tracery. Between the bays, at first-floor level, is a small cusped window. Below it, the entrance porch, with a plain segmental opening, brings the doorway to the same plane as the left-hand bay. The inner entrance doorway is a beaded round-arched opening. There has been some alteration to the right of the porch, a second doorway approached by a ramp having been provided. The south-west elevation also has two gabled bays. Against the projecting right-hand bay is an external stack, corbelled out to greater width below the first-floor; in the upper part of the stack is a terracotta panel depicting a sunflower from which rise grouped shafts, first of square section, then circular. To the left, coupled windows to the ground floor, with cinquefoil window above, and decorative terracotta to the apex of the gable. Attached to the north-east of the building is a low, lean-to brick structure, adapted in the early C21 from a covered play-shed; the wall of the house above it is blank, but for a pilaster, and a small square window.

INTERIOR: The interior of the building has been considerably altered, but it retains wood block floors, and a good proportion of original joinery, including boarded doors and cupboards; the staircase has moulded newel posts, similar to those in the school.