Central Library

SD 82 SW RAWTENSTALL QUEEN'S SQUARE

14/227 Central Library 7.6.1971 GV II

Public Library, 1906, by Crouch, Butler & Savage of Birmingham (Pevsner). Red brick with rock-faced sandstone facade, steeply-pitched slate roofs with ridge ventilators. L-shaped plan on corner site: 2 wings built at reflex angle, hinged on a drum with a lantern, with a segmental reading hall in the angle to the rear. Two storeys with single-storey reading hall. Classical style with some baroque detail: principally the entrance front at the centre of the 3/4-cylindrical corner facade, which has a one-bay 2-storey ashlar facing incorporating a porch of free Ionic columns distyle in antis, frieze lettered PUBLIC LIBRARY, dentilled cornice; at 1st floor a sashed window with architrave and iron mock-balcony in a segmental-headed panel flanked by ornamemted panelled pilasters, the whole under a prominent dentilled cornice arched over the centre; and set back, a balustraded drum carrying an octagonal lantern with domed roof and finial. Each side of the entrance bay are 3 sashed windows on each floor, all with glazing bars, (the upper with smaller 6-pane upper leaf). Receding wings have round-headed windows at ground floor rectangular at 1st floor. Rear: red brick, the reading hall with very tall windows, wings with coupled windows at 1st floor, and drum with 3 tall stairlights. Lantern has rectangular windows. Interior: ground floor is one vessel with Ionic colonnades (foliated bands to the columns, and foliated beams in the wings); Art Nouveau balustrade to staircase in drum.

Listing NGR: SD8104422733