Bedminster Library

Bedminster Library, built in 1914, is by Sir Frank Wills and stands on Bedminster Parade, Bedminster. It is an Edwardian Baroque style brick building with limestone dressings and a tiled hipped roof. The library is open plan with a stair tower to the rear left.

The symmetrical front has heavy clasping pilasters to an entablature with a modillion cornice, and a parapet with a plinth and a raised centre featuring a wreath. Articulated ground-floor brick buttresses support first-floor Ionic pilasters. A large doorway has broad panels to a pulvinated frieze and a wide, open pediment. The doorway itself has pilaster jambs, a low entrance with scrolled keys and double six-panel doors, an oculus above with an octagonal lantern, a split key, and a cartouche held by flanking putti. Semicircular-arched ground-floor windows have keys and imposts and contain 12/12-pane horned sashes. First-floor windows, set beneath the entablature, have distyle-in-antis Doric columns between the pilasters and contain glazing bars. The three-window left-hand gable has ashlar bands, with ground-floor windows similar to the front, incorporating doorways beneath lunettes, and first-floor windows matching the front. A tall central semicircular-arched window, with pilaster jambs and a segmental-arched hood, is positioned above.

The three-stage stair tower features ground-floor windows similar to the gable and a double door beneath a deep stone canopy. It has architraves to first-floor windows, a triple window in the left return with a segmental pediment to the centre, and plain sill and head bands. Heavy scrolled consoles support the plain ashlar eaves, with narrow windows set between, and a pyramidal roof tops the tower.

The interior has an open ground floor featuring a cornices and quadripartite vaults to the left side, supported on plain columns. The stair tower includes an open-well stair with a central lift shaft.

A historical note highlights that the £10,000 cost of construction was met by George Wills.