The Listed Building (formerly Floodgate School), Digbeth Campus, South Birmingham College

The Listed Building, formerly Floodgate School and now part of the Digbeth Campus of South Birmingham College, was constructed in the late 19th century. It is a substantial building exhibiting a complex and picturesque High Victorian Gothic style.

The south front is distinguished by four large gabled bays to the left. The ground floor walling is flush, while the first floor features projecting pilaster buttresses topped with richly-moulded terracotta gablets. Windows are divided by two mullions. Ground and first-floor windows have segmental heads, and second-floor windows have arched heads that extend into the gables, with terracotta decoration to the eaves. To the right, a recessed bay contains a doorway and a series of small windows, including two lancets at the top, suggesting a staircase within. The east face mirrors the south front with a similar bay and four storeys of staircase windows. A square, wooden turret with a pyramidal roof and weather vane rises from the ridge.

The north front features a long section of blank walling to the left, followed by six bays corresponding to the hall interior. These bays have windows with cambered heads on the ground floor and taller windows above, featuring a prominent transom and arched heads. Wide buttresses with fluted corners and offsets flank the bays, terminating in gabled tops with open terracotta tracery. Extensive terracotta ornament includes bosses, blind arcading to the top of the wall, and an elaborate eaves cornice.

The east, or Milk Street, front, originally the main entrance and currently linked to a 21st-century college addition, presents blank walling except for clusters of four recessed lancets arranged at the first and second-floor levels, illuminating a staircase. A single-storey, canted porch with a flat roof is present at ground floor level, with an elaborate gabled porch on its right flank.

Rising above all sides is the ventilation tower, which consists of a square lower section and an elaborate upper stage with bowed sides, polygonal turrets at the corners, an arcaded parapet, and cast-iron cresting.

The interior entrance from Milk Street leads into a corridor with fireproof vaulting, which opens onto a hall with an open-well staircase. This in turn connects to the first-floor assembly hall, which boasts hammer beam roof trusses supported on painted stone corbels. A balcony landing projects from the south flank wall, supported by deep cast-iron brackets with panel tracery and pendant bosses. Original doors are largely intact, featuring glazing to the upper panels. Classrooms and passageways are characterised by vertical plank panelling below the dado.