The Boat Gauging House, Tipton Canal Basin (Off Factory Road) Birmingham Canal Birmingham Level

A boat gauging house built in 1873 for the Birmingham Navigation Company. The building is sited alongside the Factory Locks at Tipton and is of red and blue bricks, laid in alternatively coloured bands of English bond, with a stepped brick cornice to the top of the walls. It has a hipped, slate roof with a cast iron decorative cresting to the ridge. EXTERIOR: The single-storey building has eight, evenly distributed, bays to the northern flank, with round-arched windows which have blue brick surrounds. The south flank is similar, save that there is a doorway with C20 sliding door to the second and third bays from the right and a gabled projecting wing to the second bay from the left. This has a window with cambered head to its west flank and a blocked doorway to its east flank. The eastern end has a central outshut which has lost its roof. It has an arched doorway at right, an arched window to the left and a central chimney stack. At right and left of this outshut are arched windows, the left hand one of which is blocked. The west end has two, large, arched openings to the lower body, which previously led to the gauging docks, but which are now blocked with C20 brickwork. Above these, at the centre of the front are two small arched windows, set at either side of a date stone which reads '1873'. Above this is a chimney stack with splayed top. INTERIOR: The building originally held two docks which ran west-east, with boats entering from the western end. These docks have now been infilled and made level with the surrounding dockside. The lock gates which would have been set inside the western doorways and the internal cranes, which were supplied by Tangye Brothers of Smethwick, have now been removed, as has the boiler from the lean-to boiler house at the eastern end.