Passmore Edwards Free Library And Institute

The Passmore Edwards Free Library and Institute in Bodmin is an institute and library built in 1895 by architect Silvanus Trevail for the benefactor John Passmore Edwards. The building is constructed from coursed squared local rubble with a rock-faced granite plinth and features freestone dressings, including the doorway and mullioned windows. It has mid-floor and first-floor sill strings and gable copings, topped with dry slate roofs that have shaped gables and crested clay ridge tiles.

The structure has an irregular rectangular plan and is designed in a Gothic style with Dutch Renaissance elements. It stands two storeys plus an attic, with a symmetrical road front divided into three bays. The central entrance bay is recessed and flanked by two cross wings with shaped gables. Above the round-arched doorway, which has a vertical-glazed fanlight and panelled doors, is a two-light window with a balcony balustrade on machicolations. The flanking bays feature paired chamfered attic lights with scrolled heads, above three-light first-floor transomed windows with segmental-arched pediments, and ground-floor windows with four lights over two lights.

Inside, original features include round arches in the crossing vestibule, moulded ceiling cornices, and an open-well staircase with an open string and turned balusters. This library is one of eleven libraries and institutes donated by John Passmore Edwards to his home county. His philanthropy was possibly influenced by a traumatic experience in Bodmin, where he walked twenty miles to witness a public hanging as a young office boy, which later led him to advocate against capital punishment. Silvanus Trevail designed six buildings for Edwards in Cornwall and was a prolific architect, known for designing 36 schools in the region and eventually becoming President of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1901.