58, Oxford Street

SP08NE OXFORD STREET 997/7/10224 Digbeth 19-APR-00 58

II

Factory. 1912, by Buckland & Farmer of Birmingham for Thomas Walker & Son, manufacturers of marine instruments. Mid and late C20 additions and alterations. Red brick, with polychrome brick dressings. Framed construction, with RSJs on concrete columns, concrete floors and asphalted flat roofs. Workshop ranges have slated north light roofs. Frontages have plinths and concrete-coped parapets. The building comprises an office range, 3 storeys, 9 x 5 bays, and a workshop range, 2 storeys, 12 bays, forming an L-plan. Windows are mainly original steel-framed glazing bar casements, those to the ground floor round headed. Office range has windows on the upper floors set in round arched recesses divided by pilasters, with a diaper work panel above each first floor window. Oxford Street front has in the fifth bay a round arched moulde brick doorway and sidelights, one blocked, under a shouldered lead hood with ropework and bosses. Panelled double doors with traceried fanlight. To left, 4 windows, to right 2 windows, then a smaller round-arched door with glazing bar fanlight. Above, regular fenestration on each floor. To right, a screen wall with pilasters and dentillated coping, with a central round rched opening flanked by pilasters and containing panelled double doors and a traceried wrought iron grille. On either side, a doorway, that to right blank, with round arch and herringbone tympanum. Canted corner has blank ground floor, with a datestone inscribed 1911, and single windows on each floor above. Ground floor flanking windows are segment headed. On the roof, a structure clad in late C20 weatherboard, housing the test tank. Coventry Street frontage has to left a single bay containing the staircase, with 2 small windows to the ground floor and single glazing bar windows on 3 floors above. To right, regular fenestration on each floor, with 2 renewed windows on the second floor.

Workshop range, to Coventry Street, has similar ground floor windows, with a pair of doors in the sixth bay. Blank upper floor divided by pilasters, with a loading door in the fourth bay. The workshops have 5 bays of north light roofs. In the return angle, a loading bay with a glazed hipped roof. Rear elevation has a mid C20 addition,to left, 2 storeys, 4 windows, with a flat roof, and in the return angle a square chimney stack with recessed panels. INTERIOR: Office range has an entrance lobby with half-glazed double doors and traceried fanlights. Main office has framed panelling and plaster cornices. Minor offices are plainer. Elsewhere, partitioning probably mid C20, and workshop and canteen fittings. Concrete dogleg staircase with steel stick balustrade, moulded wooden handrail and glazed brick dado. Workshop range has exposed framing and glazed partitioning, and includes 2 light wells. Roof building contains polygonal test tank with rotating arm and fittings for test equipment.

Listing NGR: SP0771986561