The Anchorage is a

Grade II* listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

building in

Handsworth Wood Handsworth Wood is a suburb of Birmingham in the West Midlands County, England. Located within the metropolitan county of the West Midlands since 1 April 1974, under the Local Government Act 1972, it was previously a part of the county of Staf ...

, Birmingham, England. It was built in 1899, to

Arts and Crafts A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...

-style designs by Joseph Crouch and Edmund Butler, as a house for Alfred Constantine, a manufacturing jeweller. At the time, the area was in Staffordshire. The building is made of brick, with stone dressing and applied timber framing. The roof is tiled, with an off-centre

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome. The word derives, via Italian, from ...

. A fire in around 1977 burnt the main hall's

minstrels' gallery A minstrels' gallery is a form of balcony, often inside the great hall of a castle or manor house, and used to allow musicians (originally minstrels) to perform, sometimes discreetly hidden from the guests below. Notable examples *A rare example ...

and a set of

mural A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. Word mural in art The word ''mural'' is a Spani ...

s, ''The Hunt and Feast'', by Fred Davis. Other interior fittings include metal work by a member of the

Bromsgrove Guild The Bromsgrove Guild of Applied Arts (1898–1966) was a company of modern artists and designers associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement, founded by Walter Gilbert. The guild worked in metal, wood, plaster, bronze, tapestry, glass and ...

, possibly

Benjamin Creswick Benjamin Creswick, RBSA (1853–1946) was an English sculptor. Life Benjamin Creswick was born in Sheffield, the son of a spectacle-maker. He started his working life as a knife-grinder, but took up sculpture with the encouragement of John Ru ...

, and embroidery by

Mary Newill Mary Jane Newill (1860–1947) was an English painter, embroiderer, teacher, book illustrator and stained glass designer associated with the Arts and Crafts Movement. As a stained glass artist, she was a disciple of stained glass designer, Selw ...

, who also made

stained glass Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although tradition ...

for some of the windows. The building was granted protection from unauthorised alteration through Grade II* listed designation on 8 July 1982. One of its attached garages has been converted into a self contained dwelling under the direction of HDA Architecture. From 1983 to 2019 the building was occupied by the

Jesus Fellowship Church The Jesus Army, also known as the Jesus Fellowship Church and the Bugbrooke Community, was a neocharismatic evangelical Christian movement based in the United Kingdom, part of the British New Church Movement. The name ''Jesus Army'' was specifi ...

as one of its Community Houses.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Anchorage, Birmingham Grade II* listed buildings in the West Midlands (county) Grade II* listed houses Arts and Crafts architecture in England Handsworth, West Midlands Houses completed in 1899