Former Blackheath Public Library

This is a former public library, built in 1909 for Rowley Regis Urban District Council to the designs of Wills and Anderson. The building is constructed of red brick laid in Flemish bond, with a plinth, cornice, and dressings of yellow terracotta, and a plain tiled roof.

The plan is roughly rectangular, comprised of three distinct ranges. Fronting Carnegie Road is a central, three-bay entrance range, flanked to its right by a rectangular range originally used as the ladies' room, and to its left by a square range serving as the original reading room.

The entrance range, in an Edwardian Baroque style, features a central, pedimented porch with a distyle in antis design, featuring Ionic capitals to the inner columns and channelled rustication to the outer pilasters. The frieze is inscribed “PUBLIC LIBRARY,” and the tympanum contains a cartouche. The entrance has half-glazed wooden doors with a dentilled transom bar and a segmental fanlight with bat-wing glazing bars. The flanking bays contain two-light windows with channel-rusticated mullions and moulded architraves. The former ladies' room, situated to the right and set at a slight angle to the road, has three bays and a central Venetian window extending through the eaves line, with single-light windows in the outer bays, each within moulded architraves. The right-hand return of this range also features a two-light window with a channel-rusticated mullion and moulded architrave. The original reading room, to the left of the entrance range and fronting Ross, consists of a square lower stage and an octagonal upper stage. Both the Carnegie Road and Ross elevations contain a single Venetian window extending through the eaves line, and the corner bays of the octagonal stage have fanlights within moulded architraves. All windows in this range have scrolled keystones. A dentilled and moulded cornice runs around the top of this range, above which is a balustrade with urns. The roof is surmounted by an octagonal lantern with wooden louvers and a domed roof covered with lead.

The interior is simply detailed, with applied plasterwork being the primary decorative element. The entrance foyer ceiling has plaster mouldings forming three squares containing frosted roof lights with diamond-shaped glazing bars. Both the original reading room and ladies' room feature deep, coved ceilings; the reading room with octagonal-shaped mouldings, and the ladies’ room with a rectangular-shaped moulding.