Seven Gables

Seven Gables, Number 14 Digby Road, Sutton Coldfield

House dated 1898 on a rainwater head on the east front, designed by Joseph Crouch of Crouch and Butler for himself. The building is constructed of thin red brick laid in English bond with timber framing and stone dressings, beneath a tiled roof.

The house is planned as two parallel ranges running east-west, each under a pitched roof, with a taller cross-wing at the west end. The junction between the principal ranges and the cross-wings is marked on either side by a tower. The north range and cross-wing have brick to ground-floor level with timber-framing above (which appears not to be planted), while the south range is almost entirely of brick. The building rises to two and three storeys.

All windows are flat-arched casements, many featuring decorative leading and coloured glass. The north (entrance) front presents a porch formed by a massive buttress and flat canopy. The entrance has an unusual architrave with sloping stone sides and a very shallow-arched head of gauged red brick with stone keystone. The front door is glazed in the upper part with elaborate strap hinges. At the foot of a slim brick staircase tower rises a tiny polygonal stone oriel, corbelled out from the angle and resembling a pepper-pot. The staircase tower has two 2-light windows with stone surrounds and one mullion each. A deep cornice and very deep parapet crown this front, with a four-light oriel on the first floor of the cross-wing, and full dormers to the right under timbered gables. A single-storey wing at the east end and the garage beneath a pyramidal roof may be later additions.

The west front displays a polygonal flat-roofed bay window to the ground floor, with the upper part of the first-floor framing jettied out and a full dormer under a segmental gable. The south (garden) front has a tower element resembling the staircase tower, blank to the south except for a stone sundial and a corbelled stone pepper-pot oriel. A three-sided staircase tower with three lights under a hipped roof stands in the angle of the tower and the cross-wing. Other features include a single-storey canted bay window under a half-domed roof with French windows, a single-storey five-sided bay window under a hipped roof, one full dormer under a timbered gable, and another under a segmental gable. Four stacks serve the building: one at each end of the two principal ranges, one in the valley between them, and one to the cross-wing.

Interior

The vestibule contains two narrow doors and one broad door with ribbed panelling to the lower part and leaded glazing above, fitted with elaborate copper strap hinges. The floor is inscribed in mosaic with AMOR, AMICITIA, VIRTUS, SPES, now carpeted over.

The broad door opens onto an inner two-storey sitting and staircase-hall with original exposed brick to the ground floor and timber-framing above, positioned between the two towers. The north tower contains an open-well staircase with incised tapering square newels bearing neo-Jacobean finials, twisted balusters, shaped rail, and a small balcony overlooking the hall. The south tower contains an ingle-nook with a beam carried on brackets carved with grotesques, original fitted seats, and a broad copper fire-hood. Above the ingle is a small study reached by a narrow stair, with a shuttered opening in the timber framing overlooking the hall. Original electric-light fittings include a lantern in copper or wrought-iron hanging from a wrought-iron bracket, and two small ceiling pendants in the ingle.

Set into the framing of the east wall is a frieze-like painting on canvas signed by Fred W. Davis and dated 1898, illustrating a scene from William Morris's A Dream of John Ball.

Double doors, framed like those at the entrance and decorated with elaborate stained glass in the upper panels, open onto the former dining-room, now used as a sitting-room. This room is panelled to picture-rail height with a broad chimney-piece resembling a Jacobean court cupboard, a broad low hearth (now slightly altered) beneath a frieze-like copper hood decorated in repousse with a heart and initials J and E for Joseph and Ellen Crouch. Cupboards flank the hearth with neo-Jacobean friezes, above which sits a canopy inscribed DULCE DOMUM, carried on turned columns and sheltering a shallow canted cupboard decorated with the initials of Joseph and Ellen Crouch. Within this cupboard, but formerly decorating the central panel, is a portrait in Limoges enamels, characteristic of the Arts and Crafts movement in Birmingham, presumably of Ellen Crouch; this is a copy of the original panel removed by Crouch when the house was sold.

Through a broad flat arch at the far end of the former dining-room lies a narrow room, perhaps intended as a large ingle. Its broad wall is framed in timber with a central fireplace having an outstanding copper firehood decorated in repousse work with stylised trees and a galleon.

All principal ground-floor rooms retain exposed beams and rafters to the ceiling.

The decorative features inside Seven Gables are probably attributable to the Bromsgrove Guild of Applied Arts, an important group in the history of the Arts and Crafts movement in Birmingham, though this is not decisively documented. Their earliest work concentrated in a handful of houses by Crouch and Butler. Seven Gables is now probably the best surviving example of this collaboration, being almost entirely unaltered externally. The interior appears to have lost only a pair of stained-glass windows by Mary Newill which formerly flanked the ingle-nook in the hall, and some neo-Renaissance tapestries which flanked the fireplace in the room beyond the dining-room.