Royal Leamington Spa Library And Art Gallery

A combined library, art gallery, and technical school built in two phases: 1900 and 1928. The architects were J. Mitchell Bottomley and A.C. Bunch, F.R.I.B.A.

The main building (library and college) is constructed in red English bond brick with terracotta dressings and a slate roof. It has two principal storeys plus an attic and basement, arranged around a rectangular light well topped with a skylight serving the library reading room. The façade to the street is symmetrical, featuring a central deep segmental porch of terracotta supported on brackets. Within the porch are double half-glazed doors with a fanlight and a small window for the porter's lodge. On either side are cross windows and tri-partite windows with terracotta mullions and transoms. The first floor is lit by a tri-partite window to the centre with mullions and transom, flanked by sash windows. Above rises a central triangular gable and two semicircular gables, all decorated in terracotta. The left side of the façade has three gables at right angles, each with cross windows to the ground floor and three and four-light windows to the first floor. A projecting wing at the left has a semicircular gable with the college entrance at ground floor level and four levels of staircase windows.

The rear front is also symmetrical, with octagonal towers at the corners topped with timber and copper turrets. Between the towers are cross windows at basement and ground floor levels, sash windows to the first floor, two small triangular gables, and two semicircular gables. A central timber and copper turret rises between these features.

The interior contains studio spaces on both floors, with exposed cast iron columns and I-beams. A spinal corridor runs through both floors with glazed tiles fitted below the dado rail. Original features include half-glazed doors and partitions, wrought iron stair balusters, central heating radiators and pipes, tiles, and guillotine-doored fume cupboards. The wash basins—each fitted with a single brass tap—and hydrant cupboards are also original.

The art gallery extension, joined to the library and college at the east end, is constructed in plum-coloured Flemish bond brick with sandstone dressings and a lead roof with skylights. It is a single-storey building of cruciform plan. The external walls are blank, divided into panels by Tuscan pilasters with ashlar capitals, entablature, and blocking course. The three wings terminate in pedimental gables with stone niches at their centres; the southern niche contains a figurative sculpture. The east end has a louvred oculus in the tympanum. The doorway on the west of the south wall has panelled double doors and applied ashlar Tuscan columns to either side, surmounted by a segmental pediment.

The gallery interior features a central glazed dome. Each of the four wings has a barrel-vaulted ceiling with coffering; rows of these coffers are glazed to create top-lit galleries, though these lights have now been covered externally. A deep entablature runs around the tops of the walls. The floor is wood block, divided into a chequerboard pattern of light and dark wood.