Century Buildings

Century Buildings, Summer Hill Road, Birmingham

A manufactory dating to around 1901, designed by architects Hipkiss Stephens of Birmingham. The building incorporates a house of around 1794 and underwent later 20th-century alterations and additions. It is constructed of red brick with ashlar and terracotta dressings and has slate roof coverings.

The building follows an evolved E-shaped plan. The original 1794 house forms part of the east range, with extensions to the north and south. Later parallel ranges extend northwards from the Summer Hill Road frontage.

The Summer Hill Road frontage comprises eight bays rising three storeys from a shallow blue brick plinth. The bays are delineated by shallow pilasters with recessed centres that rise through the entire facade from a wide moulded terracotta frieze and terminate at a shallow parapet with a dentilled cornice. The left-hand bay features a double doorway with 20th-century three-panel doors and a tall overlight set within a quoined surround. A moulded string forms a cill band to the ground floor windows. Beyond this sits a wide vehicle entrance to an enclosed yard. Further right is an inserted 20th-century doorway with canopy and four windows with 20th-century frames. The window openings above diminish in height and are topped with wide terracotta lintel bands and narrow moulded cill bands. The three eastern bays, together with the corner bay and three southern bays facing Powell Street, carry more ornament than the plainer western bays.

The Powell Street frontage features a blocked doorway at the angled corner, now forming a window with quoined surrounds to the openings above. The parapet carries a segmental pediment bearing an inscription. Three bays match those of the Summer Hill Road frontage. Further right is the modified side elevation of the former 1794 house, rising from an ashlar plinth with a hipped roof. This section comprises three bays over three storeys with window openings beneath rubbed brick flat arched heads. A cill band marks the first floor openings, and the building has an ashlar eaves cornice and shallow parapet. A lower two-storey three-bay addition to the right dates from the same period as the 1901 frontage building.

To the rear is a two-bay workshop wing linking to an eight-bay three-storeyed workshop range extending from the rear of the Summer Hill Road frontage. This range features multi-pane workshop windows beneath shallow segmental arched heads. A return wing at the north end houses toilets and a covered metal staircase.

The site's history shows it was originally developed as a house around 1794, believed to have been built for the Oughton family. From around 1810, it was occupied by Henry Adcock, a jeweller, gilt toymaker, and button and bead manufacturer. In 1901, Messrs Ahronsberg Brothers, jewellers, purchased the site and converted the premises into a goldsmiths and jewellery manufactory.

The building is one of a small number of survivals where 18th and early 19th-century housing endures within a later manufactory development. Such sites demonstrate the transition from residential to industrial use and the subsequent intensification of industrial development that characterised the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter, a specialist manufacturing district now recognised as being of international significance.