91-92, Vittoria Street

BIRMINGHAM

997/0/10257 VITTORIA STREET 29-APR-04 91-92

GV II Manufactory with attached workshops. c.1890 with minor late C20 alterations. Red brick with stone dressings and blue brick detailing, brick gable stacks and a Welsh slate roof covering with crested red clay ridge tiles. PLAN: L-plan workshop complex with street frontage entrance range and storeyed rear workshop range facing onto service yard. EXTERIOR: 5 bay, 2 storey frontage range rising from a shallow blue brick plinth. To left, a transomed 3-light display window beneath a 3-centred arch head, with flanking arch-headed doorways with multi-pane overlights. Hood mould with label stops above opening, linked with keystone of wide central arch. Further right, depressed segmental arch-headed vehicle entrance with stopped dripmould and vertically-boarded doors. 5 upper floor windows with chamfered lintels and cill, and 2 over 2 pane asymmetrically-divided sash frames. Decorative moulded brick eaves cornice. 7-bay 2 storey rear workshop range with multi-pane cast-iron window frames on sloping blue brick cills beneath shallow brick-arched heads on both sides. INTERIOR: Left -hand doorway with plain stair and vertically- boarded lining to stair well. The stair provides separate access to upper floor. Right-hand door provides access to frontage ground floor, and separate access to rear ground floor from side passage to south. Forms part of a group with Nos. 85 and 87 Vittoria Street (q.v.) and the School of Jewellery (q.v.) A small and very well-preserved purpose-built manufactory of c.1890, apparently designed for multi-occupancy, with numerous window openings to 3 elevations and a distinctive interior layout providing for separate ground and first floor accommodation, characteristic of this industrial quarter of Birmingham, now considered to be of international significance.