87, 88 and 88a, Vyse Street

A pair of manufactories dating from the mid-19th century, with later alterations in the late 19th and late 20th centuries. The buildings are constructed of red brick with painted stone dressings, featuring a truncated central ridge stack and a hipped roof covered with composition slates.

The building plan consists of a long street frontage formed by a pair of double-fronted former dwellings, with added parallel rear workshop ranges creating narrow yards. The 7-bay frontage range is two storeys in height, with No. 87 also having a basement; the smaller right-hand end bay likely served as a passage to the rear workshops. The remaining 6 bays form a near-symmetrical facade with two central doorways between flanking windows. The doorways are topped with pediments, featuring altered pilaster doorcases. The doors are four-panelled, with the door to No. 88 set within a panelled reveal. The left-hand section includes a ground floor display bay window supported by elaborate moulded brackets and a dentilled cornice. The right-hand window features a shallow-pitched lintel and undivided sash frame, while the wider openings on the right have 20th-century joinery.

First-floor windows are set above a painted sill band, with rectangular surrounds to the outer openings and semi-circular arch-headed openings above each doorway. A lower semi-circular headed window with glazing bars is located at the right-hand end. The rear elevation of No. 88 incorporates an added storeyed workshop range.

The workshop range at No. 88 contains a composite metal and timber roof structure, supported on one side by brick piers and on the other by cast-iron columns. Evidence of former floor-level shafting remains.

Originally built as houses, the buildings appeared as such on the Piggot-Smith map of 1855-62. By 1889, an Ordnance Survey map shows a dog-legged range attached to the rear of No. 87, and the rear yard of No. 88 was sub-divided. The workshop range at No. 88 was added between 1887 and 1907.

These are a mid-19th century pair of small, evolving manufactories, originally houses, rapidly adapted and extended to form industrial premises within a significant manufacturing quarter of Birmingham, now recognised for its international importance.