Nos. 93-95 Hagley Road, Edgbaston, Ladywood, Birmingham

Summary

A pair of semi-detached houses of early or mid-C19 date in a classical style with late-C20 extensions to the rear.

Description

A pair of semi-detached houses of early or mid-C19 date in a classical style with later-C20 extensions to the rear.

MATERIALS & PLAN: red brick walls with painted stone dressings and a hipped slate roof of shallow pitch. Each house has three storeys and a basement with a two-storey extension to the rear, built on the site of former coach houses.

EXTERIOR: the houses are mirror images, grouped beneath a continuous cornice, with blocking course and a wide panel of brickwork at the centre which form part of a loosely grouped street frontage along the north side of Hagley Road on the Calthorpe Estate. The southern, entrance front of each house has three bays with a central door which has a Tuscan, flat-roofed portico with bold Acanthus foliage to the frieze and prominent astragal to the columns. The fanlights of both houses are original, with interwoven glazing bars. Lateral windows at ground and first floor levels are of sixteen lights with twelve-pane sashes to the centre of the first floor and six-pane sashes to the centre of the second floor flanked by eight pane windows. All of the windows have similar painted stone heads with central rosettes to the panelled lintel, at either side of which are brackets supporting a stone shelf. Attached to the eastern coach house extension and extending south to the road is a brick wall which forms part of the boundary.

The flank walls of the houses are largely blank, with a small window to the left side and two to the right.
The rear, northern, front has a similar arrangement to the street front, with three bays to each house and a narrower bay to the centre, all of which have cambered heads to the openings. At ground floor level the two outer bays are masked by late-C20 extensions, in place of the former coach houses. These extensions are of plum-coloured brick, laid in stretcher bond. The north faces have two bays with flat heads and dentiled brick cornices below the parapets.
INTERIOR: both houses have similar joinery of good quality including open string staircases with square balusters, wreathed curtails and moulded tread ends, featuring acorn drops, which continue as a frieze around the landings. Carved surrounds to doors and windows occur in the front part of the building, including trellis and reed patterns and splayed and panelled surrounds to the front doors. Original window shutters are largely in situ. There are further, similar fanlights over the passage doors that divide the front from the rear of each house. Plasterwork includes elaborate ceiling roses to the staircase halls and cornicing which continues under the flights of stairs. Similar plasterwork occurs in some reception rooms. Some rooms in No. 95 have new cornicing. The partition wall between the houses was removed at ground floor level at some time in the C20, to allow one large space, but this has now been replaced. Original fire surrounds have mostly been lost, but there is a cast-iron fire surround of late-C19 date and a ‘Minster’ fire surround of C20 date in No. 93.

Pursuant to s1 (5) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (‘the Act’) it is declared that the mid-C20 two-storey annexes, built on the site of former coach houses to the rear of both 93 and 95 Hagley Road, are not of special architectural or historic interest.

History

The Calthorpe Estate lies to the west of Birmingham and has belonged to the Gough family since 1717. The rural nature of the estate remained throughout most of the C18, with a few leases granted close to the expanding city from 1786 in the triangle between the Hagley and Harbourne Roads. From 1810, however, agricultural tenants were replaced by ‘gentlemen and tradesmen’ and several new roads were cut. The estate allowed tenants to take as much land as they wanted, adding to the exclusivity of the neighbourhood, but speculative builders also put up smaller, more closely-packed houses. Terraces are rare and tend to be a feature of the earliest development along the Hagley Road. The style of the earliest building was largely Neo-Classical with a mixture of picturesque Tudor appearing from the 1830s. Later development includes many designs by the notable architects working in Birmingham and most of the styles in favour in the C19. Conversion of houses into offices along the Hagley Road began in the early C20 and gathered pace after 1945. In 1957 the estate commissioned John Madin to produce a new plan for zoned development, which concentrated on low-rise infill domestic building to the south-west and office development along the Hagley Road, with high-rise towers set amongst landscaping that aimed at a maximum of one third plot coverage. Madin’s own practice designed several of these buildings.

Nos. 93-95 Hagley Road appear to date from the early to mid C19. Ordnance Survey maps show that they had coach houses to the rear but these appear to have been rebuilt in the later C20 and do not correspond exactly with the footprint of the earlier buildings shown on Ordnance Survey maps. The buildings were in use as offices from the mid-1950s. They were rented by the RAC from 1955 to c.1968 and later functioned as the Royal Norwegian Consulate. From 2000 to 2010 they were rented to a company called Cuthbert’s and they are now leased out as suites of offices for a number of small businesses.

Reasons for Listing

Nos. 93-95 Hagley Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

* Architectural quality: the two houses have a unified and impressive architectural front and carefully designed detailing to the interior;
* Integrity of original design: external and internal features survive well and the original plan of the house can be clearly understood;
* Group value: Nos. 93-95 Hagley Road group well with other listed buildings on the Calthorpe Estate, including Nos. 97-107 and No. 109 Hagley Road.

External Links

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