37-39, LUDGATE HILL (See details for further address information)

A late 19th-century office and workshop complex, with 20th-century alterations, is located on Ludgate Hill and Water Street in Birmingham. Originally a brass foundry and fancy metal goods manufactory, it is constructed of smooth orange brick with painted dressings and has a hipped roof covered in composition tiles. The building has an L-shaped layout, with a five-bay office range fronting Water Street and a lower, two-storey workshop range attached to Water Street. The main office frontage is near-symmetrical, with three wide ground-floor openings featuring basket-arched heads, projecting keyblocks, and rendered panels beneath modern tripartite window frames. A central doorway is flanked by a narrower semi-circular arched doorway, a wide opening, and a smaller doorway at the end bay. A continuous string course runs above the ground floor openings, acting as a hood mould over the arches. Paired sash windows with glazing bars in the upper sashes are set within shallow arch-headed openings on the first and second floors, all contained within recessed panels with moulded brick surrounds and delineated by shallow pilasters rising from a broad painted storey band. The return bays to Water Street are similarly detailed and continue for six bays as a two-storey workshop range with segmental arched heads over window openings on both floors, separated by the storey band. Many workshop windows retain small-paned cast-iron frames with integral pivot lights for ventilation, although ground-floor openings at each end of the workshop range have been altered. The site was identified as a brass foundry on a 19th-century insurance plan and is shown in its current form on an Ordnance Survey map from 1902. The building forms a group with No. 23 Ludgate Hill, and represents a late 19th-century metalworking factory typical of Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, a district recognised for its international historical significance.