The Hazrat Khadijatul Kubra Girls School and Madrasah

DESCRIPTION School, 1879, built by Martin and Chamberlain, for the Birmingham School Board. Alterations and extensions c.1894, 1911, and 1931, with a late-C20 addition to north-east. Of red brick, with tiled roofs with decorative ridge tiles, and brick stack. Dressings are of cut brick, and stone, with some terracotta details. The majority of the timber windows in the older parts of the building appear to be original. The building fronts Cooksey Road, with a ventilation and stair tower rising at the west end. The principal extensions lie to the south-east end of the building.

EXTERIOR The building is two storeys high, with attic. The street frontage of the original range is of five bays, each bay containing paired rectangular windows, the upper windows being shorter. Windows with cambered heads are set within recesses of beaded brick, with gauged brick lintels and stone sills. The windows rest on raised brick bands, whilst a third band runs above the ground-floor windows. A billet moulding runs beneath the gable eaves. Towards the west of the range, the roof is broken by two dormer windows, with half-timbered gables. The shaft of the tower has two narrow windows with small quatrefoil openings above to south-west; to north-west, paired arched openings with hood moulds. Chamfered corners rise towards the top of the tower; angle buttresses with gablets terminate in a 'belfry' with wooden louvres framed by ringed columns with leaf bases and capitals. At the apex, a gable, with quatrefoil; above it, an iron finial. A lower gabled bay sits below the tower. The two-storey rear face of this principal range is divided into four gabled sections, each containing three or four windows surmounted by gables; the central two gables hold a form of Diocletian window. There has been considerable alteration to this frontage, with windows having been adapted to provide door openings. On the south-east frontage, the end of the original school has a late-C19 addition with angled gables and irregular fenestration; to right, gabled additions of the late C19 and early C20, with the later C20 flat-roofed extension to far right. At the centre of this elevation, a sign board.

INTERIOR The interior has been considerably altered in the C20 and early C21, though the internal plan is still legible, and some notable features survive. The ground and first floors each contain a hall to the front of the building, from which classrooms opened to rear and sides. The first-floor hall has a hammerbeam roof with arched braces and pierced sexfoils to the spandrels; the space beneath the roof is divided by low C21 timber partitions. The ground-floor hall has a vaulted fireproof ceiling and boarded dado panelling with moulded rails. A number of the original classrooms have been subdivided. On the ground floor, the openings between hall and outer rooms take the form of wide pointed arches, some of which contain original doors with chamfered rails and muntins, within glazed surrounds.