Twickenham Library

Twickenham Library is a two-storey rectangular building with a single-storey wing containing the main downstairs reading room running parallel to it at the rear. The architectural character is dominated by French-influenced neoclassical styling concentrated on the main east façade facing Garfield Road.

The east façade is arranged in five bays (2-1-2). The ground floor is faced in channelled Bath stone ashlar, and the first floor in fine red brick with stone columns and entablature. Ground-floor windows in the outer bays are sashes set in recessed round-arched openings; the foundation stone sits between the left-hand pair. The first floor has metal-framed rectangular windows positioned between engaged Ionic columns with dropped pendant decoration supporting an entablature. A projecting centrepiece features paired columns—Doric below and Ionic above—supporting sections of entablature.

Stone steps, partly obscured by a modern access ramp, lead to a round-arched entrance doorway with coffered sliding doors and a glazed fanlight. The stone surround is richly carved with a bead-and-reel moulding interrupted by raised voussoirs, and a semicircular hood above supported on radiating scroll brackets. On either side are sculpted roundels depicting Alexander Pope and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Twickenham's most celebrated literary residents. Above the first-floor window architrave and breaking into the triangular pediment is a large sculpted relief of female figures writing, reading and painting. An attic parapet with small carved wreaths completes the façade, and a louvred timber cupola crowns the slate-covered main roof. The side and rear walls are of stock brick and entirely plain. A brick lift shaft was added to the rear in 2005.

The interior of the main entrance contains a small lobby with mosaic and terrazzo flooring and arched doorways leading right and left to the reading rooms and straight ahead into the stair hall. The central archway tympanum retains a plaster relief with cherubs and scrollwork surrounding the date 1907, though the doors themselves have been replaced. Beyond lies the circulation hall, a grand double-height space with dado panelling and a great flying stair rising round it on all four sides. The hall is lit by a large Venetian window with stained glass displaying civic heraldry and motto scrolls. The stair is of oak and mahogany with an elaborate balustrade formed of heavy strapwork panels. A marble plaque on the wall commemorates Edward Thorne, a local man who lost his life making a gallant attempt to save a lady from drowning in 1916. To left and right are double oak doors leading to the side rooms, their leaded upper lights having curved transoms and painted glass panels inscribed NEWS ROOM and MAGAZINE ROOM. Ahead is a large segmental arch (formed from three smaller arches in 2005) leading to the main reading room, which occupies the single-storey rear block and has a barrel ceiling with a large central skylight. Glazed oak doors from here lead back into the news and magazine rooms. Beneath is a basement store with a concrete beam ceiling supported by a row of cast-iron columns.

The first-floor landing has two sets of double doors identical to those downstairs but marked REFERENCE ROOM and LECTURE ROOM. A third door, moved from downstairs and marked accordingly, leads to a small staffroom. The former reference room has a plaster strapwork ceiling, much renovated in 2005. The former lecture room opposite has a deeply coved ceiling with richly moulded plaster pendants; in 2005 a rectangular enclosure containing staff accommodation was formed in the rear part of this room.