Selly Oak Electricity Sub Station To Rear Of Number 659

Selly Oak Electricity Sub-Station, located to the rear of number 659 on Bristol Road, was built around 1890. This tall brick and terracotta building features stone dressings and is designed in a Gothic style associated with Joseph Chamberlain. From the road, it resembles a very tall version of a two-storey French Gothic Royal Chapel, raised on a high rectangular plan.

The southeast front has a deep flight of steps leading up to the main entrance portal, which is topped by a window and flanked by buttresses. The top floor features a triple group of lights set within a pointed arcade made of cut ornamental brickwork. The roof is steeply hipped, covered with tiles, and has terracotta floral bracketed eaves cornice and finials.

On the east return elevation, there is a gabled staircase tower that adjoins the entrance front, featuring stepped lights on its east face. Above this, the top floor or clerestory has a tall pointed blind arcade of three bays, also made of cut brickwork and supported by ashlar shafts, rising from a weathered string course. The building has a projecting apsed transept at the basement and ground floor, which includes a stone-dressed lobed arcaded light, terracotta eaves, and a steep tiled roof that curves to form the bow of the apse. There is also a lower single-storey transept wing on the southwest side.