Former Sydenham Public Lecture Hall with entrance gates, piers and railings

Former Sydenham Public Lecture Hall with entrance gates, piers and railings

The building comprises two distinct phases of construction. The central core is a lecture hall built between 1859 and 1861, executed in the Italianate style. This original structure is two storeys tall with a hipped slate roof. The main façade was originally faced in red brick with contrasting white brick used locally for polychromatic effect. In 1904, much of the facing brick was covered with roughcast to match the extensions, leaving only the polychrome elements exposed; some of the red brick appears to have been stained black at this time.

The ground floor of the original building originally featured five tall round-headed windows treated as a continuous arcade, with banded brick voussoirs and raised impost blocks; only their heads are now visible above the 1904 lobby. Above these is a storey band of red and black brick laid in chevrons. The upper storey has a continuous row of ten round-headed windows with banded voussoirs and stone cills; the aprons beneath and the bases of the intervening piers are of white brick. At the eaves is a cogged brick cornice. The rear block, slightly lower in height and altogether plain in treatment, belongs to this first phase. A massive rectangular stack emerges from the valley between the two roofs.

In 1904, Flockhart added a low front lobby and taller flanking wings. These additions are of roughcast brick with dressings of orange-red brick and tile and a russet glazed-brick plinth, executed in an Arts and Crafts version of the Queen Anne revival style. Across the front of the building runs a low flat-roofed corridor whose square windows, set in brick architraves, have flat-arched tilework heads with projecting keystones and cornices. Between these are a series of cast-iron downpipes, their hoppers emblazoned with the date 1904. In the centre is a square projecting porch, treated as a low tower with corner pilasters, a belfry-like open upper stage and a pyramidal roof crowned by a three-pronged timber and metal finial. The main doorway has splayed reveals and a pointed segmental-arched tilework head, with metal plaques above displaying LCC insignia. Hip-roofed projections at either end of the corridor connect to a pair of two-storey gabled wings with broad end stacks bearing sunken keystone panels. The return elevations have segmental windows with keystone heads, and tall half-dormers lighting the first-floor art rooms. The wings are linked to the central core via hip-roofed lateral blocks, also with segment-headed windows. Flat-roofed utility blocks project to the rear.

The internal plan comprises two large halls in the front central block, the lower floor one now subdivided by a glazed partition, with smaller classrooms and workrooms to the sides and rear. Circulation is by means of the lobby-corridor across the front of the building, and by two side corridors running through to twin staircases and utility rooms at the rear. Most rooms have wood-block floors and timber skirtings, and some have matchboard dado panelling. Internal doors have two solid panels below and six glazed lights above; in most rooms they are set in shallow curved internal porches, apparently added in the 1904 alterations. The rear staircases have plain metal balustrades. The ceiling beams in the lower hall rest on simple moulded corbels and have been reinforced by means of three tall iron columns. The upper hall has a boarded floor and a ceiling of timber trusses reinforced by iron ties.

The main Kirkdale entrance to the site is marked by a set of gates, piers and railings. The four square brick piers appear to be those shown in a photograph of 1880, but their tall stone caps were presumably added in 1904, as were the lamp casing on the left-hand pier and the present wrought-iron gates and railings with their ornamental scrollwork and heart motifs.