The Gothic, Great Hampton Street

Image: © A J Paxton Taken: 23 Mar 2022

This building, with its octagonal turret and spire, and below it an oriel window, is a very striking Birmingham landmark standing at the acute angle formed by Great Hampton Street, to the left, and Great Hampton Row, to the right. It was a public house called The Gothic or the Gothic Inn for most of the 20th century and has been a Grade II listed building since 1982. The official listing dates it to the late 1870s and comments on its Ruskinian Gothic style (referring to the Victorian art critic John Ruskin, who promoted the revival of medieval arts and crafts including the pointed-arch 'Gothic' style of architecture) and to its polychromatic (multicoloured) brickwork, featuring bands of red, blue and yellow bricks https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1075539?section=official-list-entry . According to the Midland Pubs website, however, the building dates from the late 1860s and was first used by a firm of goldsmiths and jewellers, Messrs Philip Vaughton and Sons. It is located on the edge of the Jewellery Quarter and the architectural style is certainly closer to that of the more ornate Birmingham factories than to that of a pub. The site describes the building as a mixed development of factory, offices and a luncheon room that eventually became a pub https://www.midlandspubs.co.uk/birmingham/great-hampton-street/gothic-inn.htm . The building and its neighbours have now been converted into a "stunning collection of 16 bespoke 1, 2 and 3 bedroom elegantly designed apartments" according to the estate agent Cordia Black Swan https://cordiablackswan.co.uk/projects/the-gothic-enquiry/ .

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