27-31, HYLTON STREET

27-31 Hylton Street is a pair of manufactories built in the late 19th century, with some alterations made in the late 20th century. The buildings are constructed of painted red brick with painted ashlar dressings, featuring tall ridge stacks and a slated roof.

The layout consists of a symmetrical courtyard plan, with parallel workshop ranges and a linking rear range that encloses a rectangular yard behind the main frontage. The front elevation is symmetrical and consists of five bays set on a low blue brick plinth. The outer bays have doorways with rectangular overlights and shallow hoods. Bays two and four feature tall windows with deep cambered and crested lintels, which are interrupted by shallow hoods on moulded brackets. The windows have late 20th-century replacement frames behind barred screens. In the center, there is a wide arched vehicle entry that provides access to the rear courtyard. The first-floor window openings in the center three bays have plain wedge lintels, while the outer openings above the doorways are canted oriels with 20th-century replacement frames. Above a deep cornice, there are clerestorey workshop windows with replacement lights arranged in a pattern of five, two, and four.

These buildings are part of a continuous street frontage made up entirely of manufactories, reflecting the earlier 19th-century trend of converting and extending houses into workspaces and offices. However, 27-31 Hylton Street are purpose-built industrial buildings. They, along with the parallel range of buildings on the west side of Vyse Street, form a solid block of back-to-back manufactories. This area, now recognized as part of the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter, is noted for its dense survival of small-scale industrial buildings, which are of international significance as a manufacturing district.