Wallsend Library

Wallsend Library

A public library designed in 1965-66 by Harry Faulkner Brown of the Newcastle architectural practice Williamson, Faulkner-Brown & Partners. The building includes sculpture by Murray McCheyne. This is a lightweight, steel-framed and largely glazed structure with white plastic laminate panels at bookshelves, buff brick walls to the rear offices, a raised platform of rilled concrete surrounded by granite sets, and a roof fascia of corrugated aluminium.

The building is a single-storey, flat-roofed, rectangular structure with a central, square, landscaped courtyard. A fully glazed vestibule provides access to a large open-plan adult lending library (originally lending and reference combined) and children's library on one side, with a small self-contained quiet room (now used as an IT room) nearby. The other side houses a meeting and newspaper room, latterly used as exhibition space and reference library, with WCs, staff area, work area, receiving area for mobile library book loading, office, janitor's room, boiler house and staff room to its rear.

The library stands on a deep rilled-concrete platform with a wide surrounding band of granite sets placed diagonally in a dog-tooth pattern, forming a 'glacis' around three main elevations. The flat roof has deep, overhanging eaves with a horizontally indented aluminium fascia. The majority of walls are formed by a lightweight, saw-toothed steel frame. The frame is glazed with slightly-projecting white laminate panels relating to built-in bookcases, a glazed band beneath and a deep clerestory band above, over which the roof appears to float. Narrower return panes are fully glazed with alternating panels incorporating glass louvres. Projecting south-east and south-west corner pavilions are fully glazed.

The west elevation faces Ferndale Avenue. The entrance is marked by a shallow, flagged ramp forming a 'drawbridge' over the granite sets, flanked by a rectangular pram park on the left-hand side and a rectangular cycle park on the right-hand side with slots for seven bicycles. Both have surfaces of small square sets and shallow brick walls with concrete coping; the pram park has an added metal railing. Either side of the glazed double doors are glazed panels incorporating the word LIBRARY in their mid-rail. There are five saw-toothed bays to the left of the entrance lighting the reference library and eight bays to the right, lighting the children's and lending libraries. The south elevation has thirteen saw-toothed bays. The east elevation has eleven saw-toothed bays lighting the lending library. At the north end the staff area is demarcated by a stretcher-bond brick wall with clerestory glazing and a full-height glazed panel next to the angled corner. The brick and clerestory glazing wrap round the north-east angled corner and continue along much of the rear elevation. Timber double doors for the loading bay are on the left-hand side. At the right-hand end the reference library is lit by full-height glazed panels with an angled, glazed north-west corner.

The interior is dominated by the light steel frame and floor-to-ceiling glazing. The roof is supported by square, 15.2 centimetre by 15.2 centimetre hollow-steel-section internal columns with the point of contact reducing to 5 centimetre by 5 centimetre points, placed on a structural grid of 5 metre centres set in from the perimeter. The space-planning module is echoed in the detail of the coffered ceiling formed of truncated pyramids made of white acoustic board set in a white plastic laminate-faced grid. Flat electric lights are placed within the apex of the pyramidal shapes.

The entrance leads into a large, fully-glazed vestibule closed by the central courtyard beyond. On the right-hand side are glazed double doors opening into the children's library. The large, rectangular steel door handles are inscribed PUSH IN and PULL OUT. Above the doorway is a metal plaque commemorating the opening of the library inscribed WALLSEND LIBRARY WAS OPENED BY ALDERMAN DINAH SOWERBY / CHAIRMAN OF THE PUBLIC LIBRARY COMMITTEE 13 OCTOBER 1966 / WILLIAMSON, FAULKNER BROWN AND PARTNERS ARCHITECTS. Beyond the children's library doors are two further glazed doors separated by a glazed panel. The further door has a metal door handle inscribed PULL IN and the second door handle is inscribed PUSH OUT. On the left-hand side are similarly detailed glazed double doors opening into the reference library. To the right is a pinboard attached to the brick wall of the staff area with a solid wooden door at the right-hand end and clerestory glazing over.

The library retains the original perimeter bookcases set into the glazing and also the majority of fixed shelving attached to the wall separating the lending library from the staff area. There are solid timber double doors at the left-hand end and a single door at the right-hand end of the wall, with clerestory glazing over. The glazed quiet room has a single, central glazed door with a circular clock above it. The side walls have clerestory glazing above pinboards. The central courtyard is fully glazed with indented aluminium fascia. The glazing incorporates glass louvres and a glazed door in both north and south sides to allow access. In the centre of the courtyard is a square, raised concrete planter, surrounded by a pavement of blue bricks. In the north-east corner of the planter is a slender, square concrete column on which is set a bronze head of an ancient Roman sculpted by Murray McCheyne. Throughout the staff area the solid timber doors with thin metal door pulls and opposing finger plates remain. The WCs and janitor's room retain the original white-glazed square tiles.

The metal shutter in the IT room (former quiet room), the modern radiators which have been added, and the modern door opening and security mechanisms fitted to, and associated with, the library doors opening off the entrance vestibule are excluded from the listing as they are not of special architectural or historic interest.