Small Heath Public Library And Baths

GREEN LANE 1. 5104 Bordesley Green B9 Small Heath Public Library and Baths SP 08 NE 7/42 29.11.78 II 2. 1893-1902 by J Henry Martin of Martin and Chamberlain. A large complex of library and baths ingeniously planned on a corner site. Built in the red brick and terracotta Gothic-Jacobean style that is the hall mark of the Birmingham School for public buildings of this date. A tall circular clock tower dominates the apex of the site with a shafted gabled doorway at the foot. A splayed single storey top lit vestibule leads from the tower to the gable end of the library hall with a north wing, and the baths occupy the broad base of the triangle, ranging across the site and flanking the wash house - service block. The pump house and boilers with a tall circular chimney wing from a bartizan pinnacled tower, close the north end of the bath block. Large delicately mullioned (and transomed) windows set in a group of buttress shafts with pinnacled parapets. Decoration details are concentrated on the clock tower with its short spire and on the gable end of the library with very slender shafted arcading and cusped lunette in apex with good relief sculpture consisting of a group of figures in medieval and Renaissance garb symbolising Learning Knowledge and Study. Steep pitched slate roofs, bellcote, to ridge of library. The cross end wing of the latter has an apexed north end. The bath halls have cambered iron trusses paired with trefoils and cast iron stiff leaf capitals, columns and shafts. All the windows retain good leaded patterned glazing with some tinted glass.

Listing NGR: SP0928986120