Erdington Cottage Homes

Edington Cottage Homes, built in 1898 as the Aston Union Cottage Homes, were part of a planned expansion of almshouses, reflecting a formal layout and the garden city ideal. Designed by Franklin, Cross and Nicholas of Birmingham, numbers 1 to 17 form the east range of housing, set back behind broad, planted lawns and flank a central avenue. Numbers 1 to 15 consist of alternating detached and semi-detached cottages, built to a Birmingham interpretation of the Queen Anne style. This style incorporates decorative cut and moulded brickwork, similar to that seen in the Lenche’s Trust almshouses of the 1770s and 1780s. The cottages are two storeys high, with single or paired pedimented gables and small canted bay windows on the ground floor. The windows have narrow, paired glazing bar sashes with flush frames, moulded brick pediments, and sill aprons. Number 17, set at a right angle to the avenue at the north end, likely served as a school annexe (accessible via number 22), and is a two-storey range with closely spaced segmental arched glazing bar sashes and a hipped roof.