28, HOCKLEY STREET (See details for further address information)

This is a terrace of offices, shops, and workshops, originally built around 1871 as houses with workshops. The architect is unknown. The building is constructed of red brick with painted stone dressings, tall ridge chimneys, and a slate roof.

The terrace occupies an irregular, wedge-shaped plot at the junction of Hockley Street and Spencer Street. The Hockley Street elevation forms the narrow end of the plot, extending as a single return bay along Spencer Street. The building is arranged over three storeys.

The Spencer Street frontage features a wide, semi-circular arch-headed doorway with a panelled door and fanlight, recessed within a panelled reveal. Above this is a painted sill band and a tall, semi-circular arch-headed window topped with a bracketed open pediment. A sill band runs across the upper floor, with a plain gauged brick arched head over a three-over-three pane sash window. The eaves are deeply overhanging, featuring an elaborate modillion cornice and ornate paired consoles. The Spencer Street elevation has eleven bays, rising from a shallow plinth and with similar sill band and eaves cornice detailing. Bay 3, 7, and 9 have semi-circular arch-headed doorways with panelled doors and reveals. Bays 5 and 11 contain simpler passage doorways with painted lintels. Bays 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 have tall window openings on the ground and first floors, framed by wide painted surrounds and shallow, canopied heads on elaborate consoles. These windows have tripartite sash frames without glazing bars. The first-floor windows above the main doorways have pedimented heads, mirroring the detail on the Hockley Street elevation. The upper-floor windows were originally three-over-three pane sashes but have been altered to workshop windows in bays 4 and 6, and with two small openings inserted at the right-hand end of the frontage. A rectangular stone plaque above the passage doorway at bay 5 displays the inscription "PLANTAGENET BUILDINGS".

The complex was likely built as a speculative development to provide houses, or houses with workshops, on a restricted site. An 1889 Ordnance Survey plan reveals three small, irregularly shaped rear yards accessed from a central passage, initially designed to accommodate combinations of residential, workshop, warehousing, and display areas. The building forms a group with No. 102 Spencer Street.

It is an example of a well-preserved multiple-use speculative building of its date within the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter, demonstrating the economic viability of restricted sites during a period of rapid expansion in a manufacturing district of international significance.