Isleworth Public Hall

The Isleworth Public Hall, comprising a reading room of 1863 and a public hall added in 1887-8 by S Woodbridge, with 20th-century alterations. The building is constructed of yellow stock brick in English bond, with coated Welsh slate roofs and brick stacks. The front reading room block, dated 1863, is two storeys high and has a three-by-one bay arrangement. It is distinguished by a blue-brick plinth with offsets, red brick bands and diaperwork between floors and to the parapet, white herring-bone brick tympana to the upper windows, and chamfered ashlar dressings to the door, windows, and verges. The windows, with mullions, transoms, and horizontal glazing bars, have three lights on the ground floor and two Caernarvon-arched lights on the first floor. The left-hand entrance has a flight of four stone steps, half-glazed double doors, and a three-pane over-light. First-floor panels flanking the windows have blue-brick offset bases and stepped cogged heads; windows are set under pointed arches rising above the parapet into gablets with crested ridge tiles, and a continuous hoodmould. The parapet and raised verges feature flat coping. The returns are in a similar style, with the right return having a three-light window to each floor and a marble date stone recording the extension’s construction. The left return includes a single two-light window to the first floor. The rear block, dating to 1887, is two tall storeys high and has four bays, connected to the front block by a lower bay with entrances on both sides. The 1887 work is plainer, with openings featuring segmental red-brick arches, and large four-pane sash windows, paired on the ground floor. Two doors replace windows on the left (west) side, providing direct access to meeting rooms, and two corbelled lateral stacks are present. The roof is half-hipped to the rear.

The interior of the 1863 block includes an entrance hall with a colourful tessellated floor and a marble Boer War memorial, consisting of a decorative, classically treated plaque with a pointed-arched recess inscribed with names. A wide cantilevered stone stair features open treads, decorative cast-iron balusters, panelled wooden newels, and a moulded wooden handrail. Panelled doors are throughout. The ground-floor reading room has a dado rail and a simply-moulded fireplace. The first-floor vestry hall features a bolection-moulded fireplace and a waggon-vaulted roof with exposed rafters. The 1887 block includes panelled doors, simple fireplaces, a back stair with wooden balusters (alternately plain and moulded), and a first-floor hall with a stage, dado rail, cornice, chamfered principal rafters and collars, and an under-boarded roof.

This is a well-executed and colourfully detailed example of a mid-19th century Reading Room which survives in a little-altered condition.