Art Gallery And Attached Balustrades Former Public Library

LICHFIELD

SK1109NW BIRD STREET 1094-1/4/38 (West side) 11/02/93 Former Public Library and Art Gallery and attached balustrades

GV II

Public library and museum. 1857-9. By Bidlake and Lovatt. Brick with buff brick facades, ashlar dressings; parapeted roof. Right-angle plan with inset octagonal entrance tower to angle to left. Renaissance style. 2 storeys with basement; 3-window range. Panelled brick plinth over basement; rusticated end piers and cornice to impost level and cornice over ground floor; top dentilled brick frieze and modillioned ashlar cornice. Entrance tower has rusticated piers and entablature to ground floor; high plinth and entablature to 1st floor, and cupola with dentilled cornice and domical vault with wind vane. Round-headed entrance has tall key to plain fanlight over C20 door; flanking round-headed windows with brick archivolts and ashlar keys; plinth has square ashlar plaque inscribed: FREE/ LIBRARY/ AND/ MUSEUM, flanking roundels; 1st floor has 3 round-headed windows; round-headed openings to cupola. 3-window range has windows with rubbed brick flat arches and 8-pane sashes with 2 ashlar antae with lotus capitals, tympana above have archivolts and keys; 1st floor has blind arcading of 3 pairs of round arches with ashlar colonnettes; two C20 buttresses with continuations of cornices. Left return facing Museum Gardens is 6-window range, the windows grouped in pairs with C20 buttresses between. Ashlar statue of sailor with HMS POWERFUL to his hat band on corbel to right end; said to date from the Boer War, origin unknown. Rear is simpler, with lean-to projection with blocked wide segmental-headed entrance and flanking niches. Right return is plain, with C20 addition to rear. Entrance tower flanked by low brick walls and ashlar balustrading of 4-centred arches, piers with chamfered angles, similar in style to those to causeway (qv). INTERIOR: geometrical stair with slender iron balusters and wreathed handrail; top-lit 1st floor. (Buildings of England: Pevsner N: Staffordshire: London: 1974-: P.192; Clayton H: Cathedral City: Lichfield: 1977-: P.102-5).

Listing NGR: SK1140909629