Small Heath Public Library And Baths

Small Heath Public Library and Baths was built between 1893 and 1902 by J Henry Martin of Martin and Chamberlain. This large complex is cleverly designed on a corner site and showcases the red brick and terracotta Gothic-Jacobean style characteristic of the Birmingham School for public buildings from this period. A tall circular clock tower stands at the apex of the site, featuring a gabled doorway below. A single-storey vestibule, which is top-lit, connects the tower to the gable end of the library hall, while the baths occupy the broad base of the triangular site, flanking the wash house and service block.

At the north end of the bath block, a pump house and boilers are topped with a tall circular chimney that extends from a bartizan pinnacled tower. The building features large, delicately mullioned and transomed windows set within a group of buttress shafts that have pinnacled parapets. Notable decorative details are found on the clock tower, which has a short spire, and on the gable end of the library, which displays slender shafted arcading and a cusped lunette at the apex, adorned with relief sculpture depicting figures in medieval and Renaissance attire that symbolize Learning, Knowledge, and Study.

The roofs are steeply pitched and covered with slate, and there is a bellcote on the ridge of the library. The cross end wing of the library has an apexed north end. The bath halls feature cambered iron trusses paired with trefoils, as well as cast iron stiff leaf capitals, columns, and shafts. All windows retain their original leaded patterned glazing, with some incorporating tinted glass.