8-9, Warstone Lane

A manufactory dating to circa 1865, with alterations in the late 20th century. The building is constructed of red brick with painted stone dressings, blue brick detailing, and elaborate decorative tile banding. It has a Welsh-slate roof with a long slope to the rear and gable stacks on both slopes. The plan is T-shaped, comprising a storeyed workshop range extending southward from the rear elevation.

The front range has three storeys and six bays. The bay on the west end was likely added or rebuilt, possibly when an adjacent building to the west was demolished. Doorways are located in bays 1 and 3, each with cambered heads, painted springers, and keystones, and a blue brick margin band. Bay 3 has a double 3-panel door below a blocked overlight; a 20th-century boarded door with a metal grille is present in bay 1. A pair of flat-headed doorways are to the right, one an insertion, the other with a rebuilt surround and some cut brickwork, originally a passage doorway from the now-removed building to the west. A single window opening with a 20th-century frame occupies the space to the left of the off-centre door, while coupled sash windows with margin glazing to the upper sashes, beneath wide cambered arches (with cambered window heads), are to the right. A molded attached shaft with a foliated capital marks the pier between the sashes. The arched heads to the windows and doors rise from a band of geometric decorative tilework.

The first floor has six margin-glazed sash windows beneath cambered heads, set on a painted sill band, and a tile impost band terminates to the left of the flat arch-headed window in bay 6. Shallow upper floor sashes, with margin glazing and a painted sill band, are above, with the cambered heads rising from a decorative brick impost band. A tiled band sits above the windows, followed by red and blue brick eaves corbelling. A rear workshop range, two storeys high and six bays wide, is accessible through a side passage to the east, with tall ground floor windows featuring multi-pane cast-iron lights. An upper floor side wall chimney rises from a stone mid-wall corbel.

Internally, the doorway in bay 3 provides access to a ground floor shop, upper floor workshops, and the upper floor of the rear workshop range. The building forms a group with No. 7 Warstone Lane. It represents a manufactory of circa 1865, displaying architectural and planning details characteristic of the industrial buildings in this specialist manufacturing district of Birmingham, now considered to be of international significance.