Nos. 97-107 Hagley Road, Edgbaston, Ladywood, Birmingham

Summary

A terrace of six former houses of 1819-20, designed by Thomas and Joseph Bateman for John Harris. They were converted to form office accommodation by John Madin Design Group (JMDG) for Rentcroft Investments c.1971 in a development which retained the façade but demolished and rebuilt almost all of the fabric behind it. Only the 1819-20 elements are listed, not the 1970s buildings to the rear.

Description

A terrace of six former houses of 1819-20, designed by Thomas and Joseph Bateman for John Harris. They were converted to form office accommodation by John Madin Design Group (JMDG) for Rentcroft Investments c. 1971 in a development which retained the façade but demolished and rebuilt all of the fabric behind it.

MATERIALS & PLAN: the Regency house façade is of brick covered with colourwashed stucco and has a slate roof. The office buildings to the rear have a reinforced concrete frame, clad with precast concrete panels. The regency houses had three storeys with a basement and the T-shaped rear wing, which extends over the former gardens of the houses, has a similar arrangement of three upper floors with an open garage at basement level.

EXTERIOR: the road front has a sunken area in front of the house with iron railings. Front doors are approached by flights of four steps. Each house has two bays. The walling at ground floor level is scribed in imitation of rustication and ends at the level of an emphatic projecting band which forms the sill of the first floor windows. The upper bays are divided by panelled pilasters which rise through two storeys to connect with the deep eaves. Panelled front doors are each flanked by fluted pilasters with foliate capitals which support a wooden entablature below a segmental fanlight with bull’s eye to the centre. Each ground floor window is slightly recessed in a panel with segmental head and has margin glazing to the sash. First floor windows are of twelve sash panes and second floor windows are of six panes, all without horns. There is an area in front of the basement of each house and this is protected by railings with vase and flame-shaped finials with gates and steps to each house basement. To either end of the terrace front ramped brick wing walls project, defining the enclosure which is common to the terrace. The western wall ends in a square, stuccoed pier.

The flank walls of the terrace are blank, but are stuccoed and represent the appearance of the domestic terrace when it had projecting wings to the rear.

The rear was entirely rebuilt in 1971 and has windows grouped in pairs with plain panels between. There are pilotis at basement garage level of the wing which extends at the centre and which is joined to the principal block by a slender, glazed lobby. At the northern end of this wing is an entrance at basement level.

INTERIOR: fanlights and sash windows of the domestic façade can be seen, together with short lengths of the original party walls between the properties. The central panelled door leads to the reception hall. This front part of the rebuilding was refurbished in the early C21. The rest of the building has an adaptable plan with rows of concrete columns to the centre of the floor space and temporary enclosure walls for individual office spaces. Staircases have teak handrails and terrazzo to the treads and are set slightly detached from the side walls, as Madin favoured.

Pursuant to s1 (5) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (‘the Act’) it is declared that, with the exception of the wall fronting onto Hagley Road and the portions of former party wall which remain from the original structure of 1819-20 inside the building, all that part of the building which was erected c.1971 is 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. 97-107, Hagley Road form part of a planned tri-partite composition, set back from the road, which was intended to have the present No. 109 at its centre, flanked by two terraces, of which this terrace forms the eastern section, but the second terrace was never built. The developer was John Harris, a plumber, and the surveyors and presumably designers, were Thomas and Joseph Bateman. The date of 1819-20, makes it among the first developments on the Edgbaston Estate. Ordnance Survey maps show the terrace to have had wings extending to the rear of each house. In 1971 the whole of the rear portion of the terrace behind the facade was redeveloped by John Madin Design Group as offices.

Reasons for Listing

Nos. 97-107 Hagley Road, Edgbaston, are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

* Architectural quality: the terrace of six houses forms an impressive Regency composition with a uniform, pilastered facade which is carefully proportioned;
* Survival of the facade: despite the fact that the building beyond the front has been redeveloped, the facade, areas, railings and forecourt wing walls have kept all of their original appearance and features;
* Group value: the terrace has strong group value with No. 109 Hagley Road, and with other grouped housing of similar date on the road, including Nos. 86-88 and Nos. 90-92 (all Grade II).

External Links

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