30-31 TENBY STREET

SP05958754 977/0/10278 TENBY STREET Nos 30-31 II A pair of small manufactories, built as three-quarter houses with attached workshops. c1871-4 with late C20 alterations. Red brick with stone dressings, gable chimneys and a Welsh-slated roof. PLAN: Twin manufactories with common street frontage, shared central passage and rear courtyard separating attached parallel ranges of workshops. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys, 4 bays with triple doorways to centre, the 2 outer openings providing street frontage entrances, the centre doorway providing covered passage access to opposed passage doorways and rear courtyard and workshops. The left-hand doorway is now blocked. Doorways with moulded semi-circular arched heads with linked hoodmould and advanced keyblocks. Right-hand doorway with 4 panel door set below semi-circular overlight. Left-hand ground floor and first floor window openings have flat brick wedge heads and sash frames with margin glazing. The right hand ground floor has a C20 display window. The second floor window openings have 2-light casements beneath flat brick heads. Stepped and moulded eaves band. Rear elevation with attached workshop ranges, that to No. 31 reduced in height but retaining some multi-paned cast iron frames beneath red and blue brick arched heads. 2 storeyed range to No. 30 with 4 doorways , cast iron window frames and 2 rear wall chimney stacks. Small pyramidal ventilator to ridge. HISTORY: The site was developed between 1871 and 1874 and is identified on the 1886-7 Ordnance Survey map as ' Milton Place'. It was built by John Cloves, and comprised a pair of three-quarter houses, each with a letting shop or office at the front first floor level, with a separate front door and stair access from the street. The shopping at the rear could be separately let. On the 1886-7 map, the rear yard is shown as being segregated into gated enclosures, themselves further sub-divided to form small yard enclosures for each workshop, and suggesting that the site was in multiple occupation. A pair of small, late C19 manufactories, built between 1871 and 1874 with three-quarter houses to the street frontage incorporating office or shop provision at upper floor level, and with shopping to the rear. This reflects an important stage in the evolution of specialist workshop premises from domestic conversions which began in the late C18 and early C19, a distinctive characteristic of this manufacturing district of Birmingham, now recognised as being of international significance.