St Mary'S Retreat

St Mary's Retreat is an early 19th-century building located on Vivian Road in Harborne. It is constructed of stucco and features a slate roof with wide flat modillioned eaves. The building has two storeys plus an attic and is designed with three bays, where the outer two bays are slightly advanced and gabled.

On the ground floor of bays one and three, there are later canted bay windows, with sash windows above them, all set within a shallow recess that has a segmental head. The attic storey includes a single almost square metal casement window. The central bay features an altered ground floor window, a first-floor sash window, and another almost square modern casement in the attic. There is a band at the first-floor sill level.

The entrance is located on the right-hand return and is set back between unfluted Ionic columns within a single-storey projection across the facade. To the left of the main building, there is an attached greenhouse, which is also early 19th-century and designed in a Gothic style. The greenhouse measures nine bays long and four bays wide, with the bays divided by thin buttresses that terminate in crocketted pinnacles. It features iron glazing bars resembling sashes, with tracery above that includes some original stained glass. Inside the main building, there is Gothic bracing to the roof. The north-west wing is not of special interest.