Gosport Museum and Art Gallery

Gosport Museum and Art Gallery

This building began as a public library and technical institute designed by A W S Cross around 1901. It was extended around 1908 when it was converted to a grammar school, and now serves as a museum and art gallery.

The structure is built of roughcast render and exposed red-brown brick beneath a clay tile roof. It follows a broadly L-shaped plan with entrances facing both front elevations and a corner tower.

The design employs Art Nouveau style throughout. The brick ground floor is laid predominantly in English bond, while the first floor is rendered roughcast above a moulded string course. The south-west wing, which was the original library, presents a symmetrical facade with a central entrance. This entrance is set within a classical porch with dentil cornice, dated 1901, supported by short coupled columns resting on a rendered, battered base wall. The main entrance door is round-headed, with narrow doors flanking it on either side, each with a curved shelf and four-pane window. The ground floor features leaded-light windows within two canted bays with flat lead roofs and battered bases, alternating with regular segmentally-headed, top-hinged windows. The first floor displays a frieze of low-relief carving by Frederick Schenck depicting three subjects: Lady Alwara, a 10th-century Saxon widow who gave Alverstoke to St Swithun Priory; Henry de Bois, Bishop of Winchester, who landed at Gosport after a storm at sea and gratefully named the town 'God's Port'; and the 18th-century industrialist Henry Court at his forge. Deep eaves run across the entire building, with a line of metal supports springing from the wall below and terminating in curved ends.

To the right of the library stands a three-storey brick corner tower. Its ground floor contains a late-20th-century glazed entrance door set within a plain stone architrave with moulded cornice and a flat, lead-covered porch roof supported by decorative stays. Above this is a Diocletian window, and a tripartite multi-pane window to the second floor, which is faced with hung tile. The circular tower protrudes at the corner and is lit by small windows that follow the internal stairs. The deep eaves continue at roof level, creating a saucer-shaped projection over the stair tower roof, which pitches to the rear.

The north wing is more functional in character. To the right of the tower is a recessed bay containing a casement to the ground floor, a round-headed window to the first floor, and a multi-pane casement to the top floor. The next bay has a canted corner with three regular windows to each floor. Further right, the elevation has a rendered first floor with flat-headed tripartite casements to the ground floor and single or tripartite casements with segmental heads to the first floor. The school entrance is of similar design to that at the corner tower. The end of this elevation is recessed with regular two-pane windows.

The side and rear elevations follow a similar, though more functional, design. The west end of the library features a battered bay window, and the rear of the hall has a large round-headed window with two transom bars and leaded lights.

The interior has been adapted for its current use. The library space has been opened on either side of the main entrance to create a cafe on the left and a museum room on the right, separated by repurposed timber screens with timber panels to the lower section beneath high-set leaded-lights incorporating some stained glass. The joinery displays Art Nouveau character with flower motifs, leaded lights, and stylised brass door furniture. The main stairs are curved with squared newel posts and banisters decorated with carved hearts. The hall roof is supported by metal arches and features a shallow gallery behind decorative cast-iron banisters.