Central Library

Central Library, Islington

This public library was designed by Henry T. Hare and dated 1906 on the foundation stone. It was altered and enlarged to the Fieldway Crescent front between 1973 and 1976.

The principal front faces Holloway Road and is faced in Portland stone. A 1906 wing extends to Fieldway Crescent, built in red brick set in English bond with stone dressings and a slate roof. The building comprises two storeys over a basement.

The Holloway Road elevation reads as five bays, with the outer bays projecting slightly. The first floor is not windowed on this front. A deep single-storey porch of rusticated stone stands in the right-hand bay, with engaged Roman Doric columns carrying a segmental open pediment. The pediment contains a datestone and floral drops in the tympanum. A flat-arched entrance is flanked by double keystones. Wrought iron gates guard the entrance and wrought iron grilles protect the left return. A dated lead rainwater head sits in the angle between porch and principal front.

The principal front has an ashlar base with banded rustication above. Three window bays to the centre sit within round, hollow-chamfered arches, with flat-arched windows flanked by engaged Ionic columns. These carry an entablature with a double keystone and broken pediment enclosing a cartouche. The windows retain original slim wooden mullions and transoms with leaded glazing. Above each cartouche rises a scrolled bracket carrying a different emblematic female head. Circular niches with architraves sit between the brackets, linked by festoons. A fascia across all three windows is lettered "ISLINGTON CENTRAL LIBRARY".

The outer bays contain, on the right, the porch and an aedicular niche holding a statue of Bacon at first-floor level; on the left, the foundation stone with a small flat-arched window above and a first-floor niche containing a statue of Spenser. A pulvinated frieze runs across the outer bays. A mutule cornice and balustrade finish the central bays, with a stepped parapet carrying wreathed ornament over the outer bays.

The return of the principal façade to Fieldway Crescent has a tripartite ground-floor window with Ionic pilasters and engaged Ionic columns carrying an entablature and central segmental pediment. A round-arched first-floor window features an eared architrave, keystone and scrolled outer mouldings. A lower two-storey pedimented wing projects to the left with a flat-arched entrance and a first-floor flat-arched window set beneath an open segmental pediment.

A rear wing of two storeys with a four-window range steps back in Fieldway Crescent, with flat-arched windows, stone dressings, a moulded stone eaves cornice and bracketed gutters.

Interior

The block facing Holloway Road has been largely gutted internally. The rear wing retains the large former reading room on the ground floor, with tall paired windows to the south-west separated by engaged Doric columns and a four-light window to the south-east similarly treated. A coffered ceiling tops this space.

Above sits the former reference library, with original panelling incorporating bookcases arranged in six bays. Eccentrically large scrolled brackets rise from piers to support an entablature leading to a panelled and barrel-vaulted ceiling. Segmental sidelights, rooflights and circular windows at either end feature archivolts, foliage drops and festoons.