Richmond Central Lending Library

Richmond Central Lending Library

This library was built as a Free Public Library and opened in 1881, with an extension added in 1886. It was designed by Frederick S. Brunton. The building is constructed of red brick with brown brick to the side and rear elevations, and sandstone dressings. The roofs are slate, with the rear range featuring glazed lights. Windows throughout are wooden sashes. The building comprises a shallow 3-storey front range with a lower gable roof range extending to the rear, designed in the Gothic style.

The facade to Little Green is symmetrical, composed of three bays and three storeys. A wide advanced porch occupies the centre bay, with a pointed arch entrance featuring a moulded architrave and imposts, a slender hood, and quoins. Above this is a corbel table and stone parapet with trefoil-headed arches, topped by a gablet with shield. On either side of the porch is a large window under a stone hood with quoins; slender colonnettes with stiff leaf capitals separate the three fixed lights above three sashes. A brick plat band runs below the first floor, which has paired sashes in the outer bays and a separated pair in the central bay, all beneath a continuous stone band cut square over each window and a string course forming a hood. The second floor has similar windows, except the central bay contains a three-part window with sashes divided by paired slender colonnettes with foliate capitals. The central sash sits under a higher pointed arch inscribed with "PUBLIC LIBRARY" in raised lettering following the arch and "A.D. 1880" in the tympanum. A stone Lombardic frieze is interrupted by a central brick gablet with stone impost and a diamond plaque beneath a hood with quatrefoil moulding, inscribed with "FREE" in raised stone lettering. The side elevations are plain. The rear gabled elevation features a gablet within which sits a tiny recess under a red brick pointed arch, with three tall lights under segmental red brick arches to either side of a one-storey toilet block with two small sashes.

The interior of the front range includes offices with a stair featuring chamfered balusters and web pointed arches between, with small trefoil cut-outs. Two first-floor studies remain, one with a wood chimneypiece and one with marble. Original library shelving and counters have been replaced with modern equipment.

The rear range comprises seven bays, with the central and rear bays forming part of the later 19th-century extension. A central top-lit nave space with lower aisles is divided by an arcade of slender cast iron columns—those to the north with stiff leaf capitals and those to the south with stylised capitals. Wide Tudor arches span between, with trefoil motifs in the spandrels at the corners. The ceiling is a deep cove with a continuous string course, above which the pitched roof contains continuous glazed panels to the apex. Ribs from each column follow the cove to a slender cross beam; the piers framing the central bay extend to much heavier beams with pediments above supporting the glazing.

This is the earliest public library in London still in use as such, opened between 1879 and 1881. It retains its impressive top-lit interior space framed by a cast-iron arcade and its dignified Gothic facade.