39, Vyse Street

BIRMINGHAM

997/0/10358 VYSE STREET 29-APR-04 39

II Shop and workshops, formerly 2 manufactories. Late C19 with later C20 alterations. Red brick with painted stone dressings, gable and mid-pitch chimney stacks and a composition slate roof covering. PLAN: Rectangular street frontage range with back-to back L- shaped ranges of workshops to rear. EXTERIOR: 2-storeyed frontage range of 3 bays, with 2 doors to left, then doorway to stair then wide central double door, then tripartite sash window, all below painted lintel band with moulded brick decoration above. 3 rectangular raised brick panels above ground floor openings, then painted cill band to 2, 3-light first floor openings with tripartite sash frames within moulded surrounds, shallow segmental arched heads and raised, pedimented keyblocks. Moulded and dentilled eaves decoration HISTORY: The plot now occupied by the manufactories is shown on the Piggot-Smith map of c.1855 with a single dwelling upon it. The site was subsequently redeveloped after c.1869 to create manufactories, as shown on the 1889 Ordnance Survey map. Kelly's Directory of 1886 records 2 occupants, Pearce and Thompson, manufacturing jewellers, and J. Goering, jewel case maker. Forms a group with Nos. 37, 37a and 38 Vyse Street and Nos. 40 and 41 Vyse Street. A pair of former manufactories of c.1870, a redevelopment of a former dwelling, and detailed in domestic scale and form, with storeyed workshop ranges to the rear. This complex displays distinctive architectural and plan form characteristics of industrial premises within the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter now recognised as a manufacturing district of international significance.