23, Ludgate Hill

BIRMINGHAM

997/0/10237 LUDGATE HILL 29-APR-04 23

GV II Offices: c.1915 with late C20 alterations. Thought to have been built for the Orbito Optical Company. Dark red brick with rubbed and moulded brick detailing. Mansard roof with wide rectangular dormer windows and tall chimneys breaking through eaves. Slate roof covering. Queen Anne style. PLAN: Rectangular street corner site, with principal elevation to Ludgate Hill. EXTERIOR: Ludgate Hill elevation of 4 bays, 3 storeys and attics, rising from a shallow moulded brick plinth. Principal entrance to left hand end, with double doorway and overlight beneath shallow segmental rubbed brick arch with hood mould. Late C20 joinery to doorway. 3 ground floor windows to the right with similarly detailed arched heads and 2-light C20 frames. Stepped brick cills on moulded brick string. Above, rubbed brick frieze band and then brick string below cills of first floor windows, set in pairs within brick panels between plain piers. Window openings with arched heads, as below, with multi-pane metal frames. Paired upper floor windows with common brick cills and flat heads with painted lintels with moulded brick eaves cornice above. Flat-headed 6-light dormer window within mansard roof with single brick stack to the left. 5 bay return elevation to Water Street with single tier of windows to left, and 2 pairs of windows to the right, the openings detailed to match those of the Ludgate Hill facade. 3 smaller dormers,interrupted between bays 1 and 2 by a brick stack. Forms a group with No. 21 Ludgate Hill (q.v.) and Nos. 37 and 39 Ludgate Hill (q.v.). This early C20 office building is an important and strongly-detailed component of 2 street frontages at one of the main approaches to Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter, now recognised as a manufacturing district of international significance.