Site:  

Ashleigh Works and No.s 20 24 Bromsgrove Road

Grid Reference:    

SP 0369 6754

Description:

Needle factory, with adjoining owner?s villa, now flats, and adjacent houses, now offices. Mid 19th century villa and early 20th century needle factory.

Factory.

Brick in English bond. Roof has continuous roof lights, set behind parapet to front. Rectangular plan of 5x2 bays. Two main storeys with basement and attic. Moulded sill courses and blue brick band at lintel level. Large multi-paned metal windows with pivoting upper section. Windows on main storeys of frontage have flanking pilasters and pediment. Bays of side elevation articulated by narrow pilasters rising to eaves level. Main entrance approached by metal staircase.

Villa

Stucco with banded rustication to lower storey and machine-tiled roof. 3 bays and 2 storeys with band at first-floor level. Central first-floor 6-pane sash survives. Central entrance has good porch with solid square piers, balustraded parapet and urn finials. Blocked windows. Entrance door has round-arched head and fanlight.

Nos 20 & 22

Both brick with slate roofs. 3 bays with central entrance. 2 storeys. Rendered sill band at first-floor level of No.22. Cornices on consoles above windows. Modern replacement windows and doors

Significance:

Ashleigh Works is a good and complete example of its type, special to the locality, and it makes a bold statement along the Bromsgrove Road. The adjoining villa is also of some architectural quality and of historic and social interest within the group. Together with Nos. 42-52 (qv) and Boxwood House (qv), they survive as an indication of the former importance of this main route into the town centre during the 19th century

History:

No History added yet.