Stalybridge Public Library

This list entry was subjected to a Minor Enhancement 22 November 2024 to Update Details and reformat the text to current standards

SJ 99 NE 4/182

STALYBRIDGE TRINITY STREET (east side) Stalybridge Public Library

G.V. II

Stalybridge Public Library was constructed between 1897-1901 to designs by James Medland Taylor (1834-1909). Medland Taylor was a notable regional architect, president of the Manchester Architectural Association, and president and Fellow of the Manchester Society of Architects. He was particularly known for his ecclesiastical buildings across Greater Manchester. The library was funded by John Frederick Cheetham (1835-1916), local mill owner and prominent public figure who later served as MP for Stalybridge. Cheetham was known for his philanthropy, and was heavily involved in the building project, inspecting libraries in London to avoid their mistakes and he worked closely with Medland Taylor to choose a central but quiet location. Trinity Street was widened to accommodate the building. In 1897 Cheetham’s wife laid the foundation stone, and the building opened four years later. His art collection, known as The Astley Cheetham Collection, passed into public ownership and was later displayed in the building. A blue plaque on the library facade commemorates Cheetham, whose generosity was recognised when he was made a Freeman of the Borough of Stalybridge in 1897. The decorative iron work located around the entrance doorway reads ‘Read, Mark, Learn And Inwardly Digest’.

The library is of two storeys with six bays and is in Jacobean Revival style. It has dressed stone to the ground floor and brick to the first floor and a clay tile roof. There is a projecting plinth, continuous sill bands and a first-floor cornice, an eaves cornice, irregular quoins and coped gables with ball finials. Bay one projects as a gabled wing, bay three has a single-storey porch and bay five has a projecting chimneystack with canted sides. The porch has cast-iron gates within a round-headed arch on bulbous Ionic columns which is flanked by taller Ionic columns supporting the entablature. The entablature is inscribed "Astley Cheetham Public Library" above three basket-headed arches. It has a cornice which breaks forward above smaller Ionic columns. The windows have two and three-light mullions and transoms, and three first-floor windows break through the eaves line and have shaped gables. There is a bow window on the right return. The interior has a central atrium, surrounded by elliptical keystone arches on rusticated columns, which gives access to the peripheral rooms, one of which is a hall-like edifice with hammer-beam roof trusses. The ceilings are of moulded plaster and there are timber screens.

Listing NGR: SJ9638298507