Wallasey Central Library, including former Earlston House

This is a Carnegie library built between 1910 and 1911, designed by Ralph B MacColl of Bolton and George E Tonge of Southport. It incorporates an earlier house dating from around 1840. The library stands in the north-west corner of Earlston Gardens park, with the older house attached to its west side via a link-bridge.

The library is constructed of red Ruabon brick with buff terracotta dressings and a green slate roof, supported on a steel frame. The earlier house uses buff sandstone and blue slate. Throughout the building, the windows have been replaced with uPVC.

The library follows a T-shaped plan: a two-storey range faces the road to the north, with a single-storey wing extending southwards. The house is approximately L-shaped, with a north-south core attached to the library and an east-west range in the north-west corner. A three-storey round tower occupies the angle between these two wings.

The Library Exterior

The library's architecture is Edwardian Baroque. Its north-facing front façade is symmetrical, with projecting gabled bays flanking the central entrance. The gables feature pediments supported by pilasters. Running across the façade are a plinth band at ground level, sill bands at both floors, and a first-floor eaves cornice band that forms the window heads and the cornice of the pediments.

The entrance projects within its bay and has an elaborate surround featuring a segmental open pediment with festoons and the inscription PUBLIC/LIBRARY. This composition is supported by pilasters rising through the design and topped with urn finials. The double entrance doors have three panels each. Above the entrance, the stair window has a shouldered and eared segmental architrave with an arched head featuring a scroll keystone. This rises into a stepped pediment containing a cartouche and urn finial. Small windows flank the entrance at ground level, with larger ones flanking the stair window above; all have surrounds and aprons.

The gabled bays have terracotta parapets and dentilled cornices to their pediments, which contain cartouches at the apex. These pediments are broken by a segmental arch over the central light of the first-floor Venetian window. Below this window is an apron with a festoon, connecting visually with the head of the central ground-floor window. This window and its flanking windows all have surrounds and aprons. A modern access ramp and steps have been added to the entrance.

The west wall (right return) of the library has five windows in a similar style with all the same bands. The first bay features a return of the terracotta parapet, decorated with a garland wreath in relief, and the ground-floor window has a terracotta surround. All first-floor windows also have terracotta surrounds and brick aprons. At the far right, the link to the old house has a two-centred archway with a hood mould, and quoined surrounds to the first-floor windows.

The House Exterior

The house projects to the right with a scored-render return, built in a Scottish Tudor Gothic style using regularly coursed, horizontally tooled stone with quoined surrounds and chamfered sills and lintels to the window openings.

On the north side, the house has an asymmetrical gabled bay at the left with a linear range extending to the right. The gable has shaped kneelers and chamfered copings, and a corbelled chimney. It contains stacked windows on the ground, first and second floors. The ground floor also has a third intermediate window, a fourth to the right, and the first floor has an additional small window to the right. The linear range to the right has a graduated slate roof with ridge stones and a full-height, twice-shouldered chimney breast with a dormer behind, band and cornice. The first floor has small windows under the eaves: one to the left and two to the right of the chimney. The ground floor has one window to the right and a door.

The west end of the house is similarly gabled with a corbelled, corniced chimney rising from the first floor and a two-light mullioned window below. At the right, the west façade of the core is largely blank, with a broad chimney breast and corniced stack (with a modern stainless-steel flue affixed).

The principal façade of the house faces south. The linear range on the left has a gabled bay at the right with quoins, kneelers and coping, and a blind arched lancet in the gable. Each floor has a three-light mullioned window (the ground-floor one being taller). Roughly central in the wall to the left of the gable are a small two-light mullioned window and a blocked shouldered doorway with a flanking light. In the angle with the core stands the three-storey round tower with its conical lead roof and a window on each floor.

The core to the right has quoined angles and a plinth, with a projecting gabled bay at the left featuring a finial and a two-storey, shouldered, square bay window with parapet. This bay window contains three-light mullioned windows at ground floor and two-light mullioned windows at first floor. To the right, the eaves are broken by three small gables over the first-floor window heads, and there is a single-storey canted bay window with cornice and parapet containing a tall three-light mullioned window. The right return is gabled with a central window on each floor and a blind arched lancet in the gable.

To the right, the brick south wall of the link has another two-centred arch with a quoined window above. Projecting at the right is a two-storey hipped-roofed block containing a tall three-light mullioned and transomed window at the first-floor left and ground-floor right, a low three-light mullioned window at the lower left, and a small window at the top right. Projecting further right is the single-storey lending library block, which has a parapet, canted angles and high-level windows between sill and lintel bands. The roof has replacement lanterns.

Set back behind this can be seen the gabled ends of the two-storey wings of the front range. In the eastern wing, the first floor has a Venetian window, with an arched window at ground floor to the right of the lending library block. The east side return of the front range is detailed the same as the west side.

Interior

The interior is well appointed and little altered, retaining much plaster and timber decoration, parquet and mosaic flooring, tiling and decorative radiators, as well as much of the original floor plan.

The entrance has outer and inner vestibules. The outer vestibule is barrel-vaulted with rich foliate plaster decoration, terracotta walls with eared architraves to the side doorways, and a basket-arched inner entrance with glazed doors featuring Art Nouveau handles. The inner vestibule has round niches with shell arches and a mosaic floor. The inner entrance has replacement doors but retains its arched, leaded overlight with dentilled transom and side lights.

The vestibules open into the main hall, which has a parquet floor and shallow barrel vault with skylights. Triple arcades run along each side, retaining the original glazed screens with openings in the frontmost arch on each side. These give access to the former reference library (right) and reading room (left). The dado has rich aquamarine glazed tiles. The arcades feature pilasters with drops, which continue above the elaborate cornice as bands across the vault, richly decorated with fruit and foliage. The south wall is open below the cornice, with two square columns; the tympanum above contains a wreath with foliate decoration.

The lending library to the south has a ceiling with deep skylights supported by Ionic columns. It retains its shelving (possibly rearranged) and manual vents below the windows. The reference library and reading room have arches in their south walls, Ionic pilasters on the side walls, and ceilings with richly decorated beams and plaster roundels and borders between.

The front wall of the main hall is also arcaded. The stair rises from the left arch, with full-height tiling matching the hall's dado and timber handrails. A modern security lobby has been added at the half-landing. The tiles continue as the dado of the upper landing, which provides access to the former lecture hall (west) and room for magazines and exhibitions (east – now housing the reference section and newspaper archives). Both rooms retain their decorative door architraves and are vaulted with decorated ribs and vents. The east room retains some original shelving. The lecture hall has an inserted partition to eaves level. In the south-west corner, a secondary stair descends to the ground floor, and there is access to the bridge link. Metal-bound fireproof doors provide access to the old house from the link.

The surviving portion of the house retains much of its plan form and has some early library furniture upstairs, such as shelves and a committee table. It also retains window shutters and other joinery, particularly in the former children's library area on the ground floor, although the rooms have been opened out. A plaque within a basket-arched recess in the principal ground-floor room records the opening of the children's library in 1915 and its reopening in 1950 after repair of Second World War bomb damage. The stone spiral stair of the tower also descends to the basement, which retains stone floors and a wine cellar with brick and stone shelving.