Art Gallery And Attached Balustrades Former Public Library

This building is a public library and art gallery, constructed between 1857 and 1859 by Bidlake and Lovatt. It is built of brick with buff brick facades and ashlar dressings, topped with a parapeted roof. The design incorporates a right-angled plan with an octagonal entrance tower set into the angle on the left side. The architecture is of the Renaissance style.

The building is two storeys high with a basement and has a three-window facade. It features a panelled brick plinth above the basement, rusticated end piers and a cornice to the impost level, another cornice above the ground floor, a top dentil brick frieze, and a modillioned ashlar cornice. The entrance tower has rusticated piers and entablatures to both the ground and first floors; its cupola has a dentil cornice and a domical vault housing a wind vane. The round-headed entrance is topped with a key and a 20th-century door, flanked by round-headed windows with brick archivolts and ashlar keys. An ashlar plaque on the plinth reads "FREE/ LIBRARY/ AND/ MUSEUM," flanked by roundels. The first floor features three round-headed windows and round-headed openings within the cupola. The main three-window range has windows with rubbed brick flat arches and eight-pane sashes, with two ashlar antae having lotus capitals; the tympana over the windows have archivolts and keys. The first floor has blind arcading consisting of three pairs of round arches with ashlar colonnettes. Two 20th-century buttresses give the appearance of continuing the cornices. The left return facing the Museum Gardens is a six-window range, with windows grouped in pairs and separated by 20th-century buttresses. An ashlar statue of a sailor, wearing a hat band displaying HMS POWERFUL, is corbelled to the right end—its origin and date (said to be from the Boer War) are unknown. The rear of the building is simpler, including a lean-to projection with a blocked wide segmental-headed entrance and flanking niches. The right return is plain, with a 20th-century addition to the rear.

The interior features a geometrical staircase with slender iron balusters and a wreathed handrail, and has top lighting on the first floor. The entrance tower is flanked by low brick walls and an ashlar balustrade consisting of four-centred arches with piers featuring chamfered angles, matching the style of the nearby causeway.