Former Camberwell Public Library and Livesey Museum

The building is a former public library and museum, dated 1890, designed by RP Whellock for the Parish of Camberwell. It is constructed of brick in English bond, with stone, terracotta, and rubbed brick dressings. The roof is gabled and covered in slate; the hall roof has a clerestory. All openings are flat-arched, except where noted.

The building comprises a hall or reading room, rectangular in plan, positioned to the left of the site, which projects to the line of the Old Kent Road pavement. Internally the hall has four bays and an open timber roof with an arched tie beam supporting the lower range of the roof, from which springs a king strut supporting the clerestory. Each truss is tied by a metal bar from the original construction. The southern half of the building was destroyed during the war.

The external elevation of the hall is a single-window range. A canted bay with tripartite windows to first-floor level is topped by a stone balustrade. Below the windows is a round-arched, keyed window. An elliptical-arched recess pierces the gable, containing an elliptical light to the hall roof. An entablature band with a frieze of swags runs beneath the gable, and quoined brick defines the corners. Scrolls surrounding an open book adorn the upper area of the gable, with a raking dentil cornice serving as the coping. An ornamental weather vane sits on the roof peak; the inscription "Camberwell Public Library Anno. Dom. 1890" is inscribed on the coved sill of the bay.

The plinth of brick unites the hall with the entrance range, which incorporates a forecourt recessed to the rear. The entrance range is three and a half storeys, with a two-window range. The recessed entrance is defined by an elliptical diaphragm arch, with a small, elaborately moulded light in the upper right spandrel. A frieze band between the ground and first floors features baskets of fruit in high relief. Paired windows above are set in a Tuscan aedicule of two bays, which extends to the second floor as a shallow rectangular bay framing a pair of windows. This centrepiece finishes in a broken segmental gable, pierced by a round, keyed light. The gable eaves are flared, and the gable peak is finished with a diminutive decorative gable in a Flemish Renaissance style.

The interior has not been inspected.

The listing covers only the hall and entrance ranges; the post-World War II extensions to the rear, which enclose an open courtyard, are not considered to be of special architectural interest.