Former Powell's Gun Shop

Former Powell's Gun Shop, 35-37 Carrs Lane

This is a gun shop with workshops and living accommodation, built in 1861 and designed by Charles Edge (active 1827-1867). The building is now used as offices.

The structure is built in red brick with diapered patterns created in black brick, and has painted stone dressings. The street frontage rises to three storeys with an attic above, while the rear L-shaped workshop range extends to five floors.

The street front is rendered at ground and first floor levels. The ground floor contains three doorways positioned at the centre, right and left, with shop windows between them. All openings are topped with four-centred arches featuring deeply-incised hood moulds and label stops. The shop windows retain their original two-light tracery in the upper portions and have untouched surrounds, though the lower sections have been replaced with twentieth-century plate glass and modern fascia boards. The left doorway has been converted into a shop window, while the right doorway provides access to the staircase serving the office chambers above. The first floor has five windows alternating between single and double-lights, with moulded surrounds and arched tympana beneath black and red brick voussoirs. The piers between these windows are now encased in wooden panels. The second floor contains four paired windows with projecting figureheads to their tympana, while the third floor has sash windows. A heavy cornice supports two gabled dormers with crow-stepped profiles and polychromatic voussoirs to the relieving arches. The rear L-shaped workshop wing features diapered brickwork with large windows positioned above work benches.

Internally, the former central corridor to the rear courtyard has been incorporated to form a central arcaded colonnade entered through the central door, from which the shop interior is accessed on either side. The shop has been largely refitted with replacement wall panelling and a suspended ceiling to the rear room on the right. The offices are reached by an open-well staircase with stick balusters and shaped tread-ends. The upper floors retain their original plan form largely unaltered, with two principal front rooms on each storey, though fireplaces have been removed. Architect's drawings show the first floor marked as drawing room and other living spaces, with bedrooms on the upper floors. The workshop wing has ranges of large windows facing east and south, with work benches positioned below them. A small forge survives in one room at first floor level.

Powell's traces its history to a partnership established in 1802 between William Powell and Joseph Simmons. By the nineteenth century they were among Birmingham's most prominent gun makers, producing firearms for the Napoleonic wars and the American Civil War. The firm patented several inventions, including the Powell Snap Action in 1864 and a half-cocking mechanism in 1866. William Powell was elected Chairman of the Guardians of the Proof House and engaged Charles Edge to design the Proof Hole (proofing shed). From 1861, William Powell gave his address as Carrs Lane, suggesting the accommodation was for his personal use. The juxtaposition of shop and workshop at this location is rare, indicating that Powell's assembled their own guns rather than relying entirely on specialist sub-contractors, which allowed them to monitor the quality of the finished product more closely. The degree of intactness in the workshop wing, with work benches and hearth still in place, is remarkable and provides important evidence of Birmingham's nineteenth-century specialist gun trade.