21 Yateley Road

21 Yateley Road, Birmingham

Grade I Arts & Crafts detached house and garden, in a leafy Edgbaston street, designed as his family home by the architect H.T. Buckland in 1899 until sold by Buckland’s widow in 1951. Buckland's work showed an originality that was much admired, helping make Birmingham the centre for a magnificent group of provincial architects. Alan Crawford, distinguished authority on the Arts and Crafts period, confirms that Buckland "developed such a highly personal style of such quality in domestic work that he must rank with the best of his time".

Buckland designed a cottage-like, white-painted rendered building, with a tall gable dividing a strongly hipped roof both at the front and back. While the roof at the front stops above the first-floor windows, that on the back drops almost to the level of the steeply sloping garden. The front door, with its semi-circular head, is entered through a deep hood, decorated with strangely abstract symbols, which are said to be based on the signs of the zodiac. Most of the windows are simple timber casements but around the main front door they are leaded, and in two cases decorated with leaded light owls and Tudor roses. Elsewhere in the house this play on Buckland and his wife’s name – Marigold – is continued in the plasterwork, and in the beaten copper chimney cowls where marigolds and Tudor roses are intertwined. The interior is remarkably intact. It is the only Birmingham Arts & Crafts house that is really well preserved, and for that reason it is one of only twenty-two buildings to be listed Grade I.

21 Yateley Road is not a large house. On the ground floor is a panelled entrance hall with a beaten copper hood by its fireplace. There is another one in the small study. Both the large drawing room and dining room have marvellous deep-panelled inglenooks with beaten copper, and decorative plaster beams. The house is full of architect’s tricks. There is a cupboard for cigars high over the dining room ingle, where they are kept at the correct humidity, and even a special extract for cigar smoke in the ingle above Buckland’s favourite seat. There is a staircase with carved hearts as balusters, with bedrooms over two floors. The house nestles in a large garden, originally the site of a gravel pit. The garden is lovely in spring and contains numerous paths and trees (including a large tulip tree).