30-31 TENBY STREET

A pair of small manufactories were built around 1871-1874, originally designed as three-quarter houses with attached workshops. The building is constructed of red brick with stone dressings, features gable chimneys, and has a Welsh-slated roof. The plan incorporates twin manufactories with a common street frontage, a shared central passage, and a rear courtyard separating parallel ranges of attached workshops.

The exterior presents three storeys and four bays, with triple doorways in the centre. The two outer openings provide street entrances, while the central doorway offers access to a covered passage leading to doorways on the opposite side of the building and to the rear courtyard and workshops. The doorway on the left-hand side has been blocked. Doorways have moulded semi-circular arched heads with linked hoodmoulds and advanced keyblocks. The right-hand doorway has a four-panel door below a semi-circular overlight. Ground floor and first floor window openings on the left have flat brick wedge heads and sash frames with margin glazing. The right-hand ground floor features a 20th-century display window. Second-floor window openings have two-light casements with flat brick heads. A stepped and moulded eaves band is present. The rear elevation includes attached workshop ranges; the range at No. 31 has been reduced in height but retains some multi-paned cast iron window frames with red and blue brick arched heads. A two-storey range at No. 30 has four doorways, cast iron window frames and two rear wall chimney stacks. A small, pyramidal ventilator is located on the ridge.

The site was developed between 1871 and 1874 and was known as 'Milton Place' on an Ordnance Survey map from 1886-1887. Built by John Cloves, the buildings comprised a pair of three-quarter houses, each with a letting shop or office on the front first floor level, accessed by separate front doors and staircases from the street. The rear shops could be let separately. The 1886-1887 map shows the rear yard divided into gated enclosures, which were further sub-divided into smaller yard enclosures for each workshop, suggesting multiple occupancies. The buildings represent an important stage in the evolution of specialist workshop premises from domestic conversions, a distinctive characteristic of this manufacturing district of Birmingham.