Witton Lane Tramway Depot

Witton Lane Tramway Depot

This is a red brick tramway depot built to house and repair tram carriages. The building is constructed of red brick laid in English bond on its street-facing frontages to Witton Lane and Manor Road, with blue brick and ashlar dressings and diapering, and a corrugated metal roof.

The depot was originally designed for garaging and repairing steam tram carriages. The site slopes gently downhill towards the east. Steam trams would uncouple their carriages from the engines at the western end of the carriage shed, allowing the carriages to roll back towards the rear of the shed. Large internal buttresses mark where the buffers originally positioned the carriages. The engines were then garaged separately in an engine shed to the north. Inspection pits for maintenance and repair originally ran almost the entire length of the depot between the rails, but these were infilled in the 1950s.

The front elevation facing Witton Lane has four bays grouped under a large shaped gable and divided by piers with recessed panels. The four doorways have cambered heads with blue brick dressings to the foot of the wall and arch heads. The shaped gable has an ashlar moulding to the top. Set at the centre of the gable is a large stone plaque with a brick surround, inscribed "BOROUGH OF ASTON MANOR / TRAMWAYS DEPÔT". The north side is abutted by the former engine shed, which does not form part of this listed item. The south flank has random bond brick walling, partially colourwashed, with a section of corrugated metal walling built in the 1950s and recovered in the 1980s at the centre. At the eastern end, the lower roof line indicates the original ridge height before electrification of the tramways. To the south is a gabled building appearing to be an early 20th-century addition, with a late 20th-century lean-to block added to its west, housing lavatories for the museum. The rear facing Manor Road has red brick walling with decorative horizontal bands of blue brick diapering, two pedestrian doors to the lower walling, and a group of three windows at the centre top, set in rebuilt brickwork.

Inside, the eastern end of the shed retains five original metal trusses of cast iron with tie rods, springing from stone corbels set near the top of internal buttresses. Other trusses to the west are plainer and appear to date from two distinct periods: most probably from when electrification was introduced in 1904, which led to raising the roof height, with the remainder dating to the 1940s following bomb damage. An internal buttress at the west end with corbel confirms that the original roof configuration seen at the eastern end once extended throughout the entire depot shed. Suspended from these trusses are insulated brackets with wire guards, though the power cables have been removed. At the eastern end a short stretch of inspection pit between the tracks has been excavated for reuse. The metal tram tracks and the square stone setts into which they are mounted are original, and the eastern wall has large internal buttresses marking the site of the buffers which originally halted the lines of carriages.