Dudley Museum and Art Gallery

Dudley Museum and Art Gallery

A free library, gallery and art school built in 1883-1884 by Bateman and Corser of Birmingham, later converted to use as a museum and gallery. The building is constructed from red brick with terracotta dressings and a slate roof.

The building occupies a wedge-shaped site on the west corner of the junction of Priory Street and St James's Road, facing onto Market Square. It is orientated south-east to north-west, tapering towards the north-west. Internally, the south-eastern ground floor housed the library (later converted to museum use), while the art gallery occupied the ground floor of the north-western range. A large stair hall and service rooms sit between these two spaces. The first floor was entirely used as the art school. Mezzanines have been inserted on the north-west side.

The exterior is a two-storey Renaissance-style building with a basement and mezzanine. The south-east elevation facing Market Square comprises five bays separated by paired rusticated pilasters. Terracotta dressings form a continuous sill band and enrich the capitals and entablature. Ground floor windows are tall timber-framed paired casements with two small square leaded lights above, beneath gauged brick lintels. The upper floor is blank, with brick panels instead of windows, a frieze and terracotta cornice. A central doorway features a heavily moulded architrave of paired fluted pilasters stepping upwards and curving outwards, supporting wide arched consoles and an open pediment containing a moulded emblem. The door itself has three timber panels with circular mouldings and a plain fanlight. The corner on the ground floor is canted and contains a pair of arched windows, in front of which stands a set of three meteorological instruments in a timber frame. Above is a turret with a richly moulded pendant base, panelling to the first floor, and an octagonal parapet from which the cupola has been lost. The central panel contains an aedicule holding the Dudley Borough Arms.

The longer St James's Road elevation is treated consistently. In the fifth bay the roofline is broken by a Renaissance-arched window to the first floor with a richly detailed segmental-arched dormer and finial. The rhythm of bays shifts at the transition between the original library and art gallery. At this junction an entrance leads to the stair hall, expressed externally as a wide bay flanked by narrower bays separated by pilasters. The doorway has timber double doors with a window either side, set within a heavily moulded terracotta architrave with fluting, Renaissance arches and an open pediment. Above, lighting the stair, are five Romanesque windows with a segmental pediment containing a cartouche with the gilt inscription 'ART GALLERY'. On the top floor are casements with gauged brick lintels and a pediment above within which is a moulded label inscribed 'SCHOOL OF ART', surrounded by scroll mouldings. A blue plaque commemorates artist Percy Shakespeare.

The building line steps back to the main floors of the art gallery, where there is an open well to the basement. As with the principal elevations, pilasters articulate a series of bays, the second and fourth being wider, with full dormers on the top floor featuring Renaissance-arched windows and segmental pediments. The return and rear elevations are plainly detailed and partially enveloped by adjacent buildings.

Interior

The entrance on Priory Street opens into a lobby with timber panelling and arched doorways leading to large rooms flanking either side of the main range: the original library and reading room. Sections of cornices and coving survive behind later partitioning and suspended ceilings. Ground floor windows to the former reading room are etched with geological imagery and a quote from Dali, added in 1992. The first floor, originally the Elementary Room of the art school, is a large open-plan space that would have been open to the roof, with moulded arched timber trusses and purlins. The original lantern was pitched with clerestory lights but has since been truncated and blocked. To the north-west are smaller classrooms, one with a north light, accessed from a tiled corridor.

The entrance to the former art gallery and art school from St James's Road leads into a large stair hall. Walls are tiled to shoulder height with cream octagon and red dot tiles, and the floor is covered in terracotta tiles. An open-well stair has slender moulded timber newels, twisted iron balusters and a moulded handrail. Windows feature leaded and stained glass with heraldic imagery, local references, entwined 'D's and floral patterns.

The north-west range contains single open-plan rooms on two storeys, with a mezzanine laterally subdividing the ground floor. The ground floor originally housed the gallery and has a mahogany doorcase with deep mouldings and a Minton-style tiled floor with cast iron ventilation grilles. Fluted column bases rise into the mezzanine above, where they terminate with composite capitals and form part of an ornate ceiling with deep relief lattice and flower moulded brackets and cornices, and a panelled ceiling with moulded ribs. Windows are timber casements now boarded over externally. The first floor, originally the Antique Room and latterly the Brook Robinson Museum, is open to the pitched roof and has two deep moulded timber trusses with tie rods, moulded purlins and a coved cornice. It is lit by two lofty dormer windows.

The basement consists of plain service rooms with brick vaulted ceilings. Cellars and a bread oven from an earlier structure are understood to survive beneath the south-east end of the building.

A low wall with wrought iron railings stands in front of the basement to the north-west gallery range.