8-9, Warstone Lane

BIRMINGHAM

997/0/10256 WARSTONE LANE 29-APR-04 8-9

II Manufactory. c.1865 with late C20 alterations. Red brick with painted stone dressings, blue brick detailing and elaborate decorative tile banding. Asymmetrical Welsh-slated roof with long roof slope to rear and gable stacks on both slopes. PLAN: T-shaped plan formed by storeyed workshop range extending southward from rear elevation. EXTERIOR: 3 storey frontage range of 6 bays, that to the west end added or rebuilt, possibly at the time of the demolition of the formerly attached building to the west. Doorways to bays 1 and 3 with cambered heads, painted springers and keystones and blue brick margin band. Double 3-panel doors to bay 3, below blocked overlight. C20 boarded door with metal grille to overlight. To the right, a pair of flat-headed doorways, one an insertion, the other with rebuilt surround with some cut brickwork, formerly passage doorway of now - removed building to west. To left of off-centre door, single window opening with C20 frame. To right, coupled sash windows with margin glazing to upper sashes under a wide cambered arch, the individual window heads also cambered. Moulded attached shaft with foliated capital to pier dividing the sashes. The arched heads to windows and doors rise from a band of geometric decorative tilework. First floor with 6 margin- glazed sash windows beneath cambered heads detailed as below, set upon a painted sill band. Tile impost band terminates to left of flat arch-headed window of bay 6. Shallow upper floor sashes with margin glazing, painted sill band, the cambered heads rising from decorative brick impost band. Tiled band above windows, and then red and blue brick eaves corbelling. Rear workshop range doorway to east. 2 storey, 6 bay rear workshop range accessed through side passage to east. Tall ground floor windows with multi-pane cast-iron lights. Upper floor side wall chimney rises from stone mid-wall corbel. INTERIOR: Doorway to bay 3 gives access to ground floor shop, upper floor workshops and to upper floor of rear workshop range. Forms a group with No. 7 Warstone Lane (q.v.) A manufactory of c.1865 displaying the architectural and plan form detail characteristic of the industrial buildings of this specialist manufacturing district of Birmingham, now considered to be of international significance.