24, PRIORY ROAD B15

The property at 24 Priory Road is a substantial, late 19th-century (circa 1893-96) red brick and stone-dressed house constructed in the late Birmingham Gothic style. It was designed by J. H. Chamberlain for Mr. Bunce and is set back from the road with a carriage sweep. The house is two full storeys high, with an attic floor in a steep gable. It has a clay tile roof with cresting tiles. The asymmetrical front elevation features a slight gabled break to the right. A prominent red brick chimney stack is notable for its splayed bases of tumbled brickwork. High-quality ornamental brickwork is present to the eaves.

A key feature is a 15-foot ashlar shafted and sharply bowed oriel window, topped with a wrought iron finialed tiled spirelet, and with cusped stone panels to its apron. The oriel is supported from the ground floor by a large cut stone corbel bracket with finely dressed and cut brickwork to the ledged, squat buttress base. Other windows are single or coupled sash windows with pointed arches and roll-moulded brick edging to the reveals, with a moulded impost string arched over the windows. The gabled break includes an over-arched pointed lunette in the gable, with floral carved stone panels below the sill. A canted bay window is present on the ground floor. The porch abuts the break and has coupled shafts with stiff leaf caps, and a small pent roof with a quatrefoil iron flower guard to the window above. To the left of the front elevation, a blank wall incorporates an external brick chimney stack. The garden front is more conventional with an off-centre gable and similar window and brick detailing.

A short link, partly obscured by a later conservatory, connects to the former billiard room. The front elevation of the billiard room exhibits unexpectedly rich decorative treatment in the gable over the ground floor windows; the wall is dressed with marble tiles, a decorated frieze, and half quatrefoils containing relief carvings of herons flanked by rosettes. The interior retains doors and door furniture characteristic of Chamberlain's work, though the panelling in the hall and on the staircase is largely of later date. The drawing room, overlooking the rear garden, has some reset panelling. The house is considered a later work by Chamberlain and displays a slight influence from "Cadogan Square" London in the details of the window reveals, otherwise demonstrating a wholly Birmingham design.