Public Library

PUBLIC LIBRARY, BRUNSWICK ROAD, GLOUCESTER

A public library on Brunswick Road, Gloucester, dating from two distinct building phases. The original building was constructed in 1872 as Schools of Science and Art and a museum by the architects Fulljames, Waller and Son, built for the Gloucester Science and Art Society and funded mainly by subscribers. The building was subsequently converted and extended to the south as a public library between 1897 and 1900 by FW Waller and Son for the Corporation of the City of Gloucester.

The building is constructed of squared rock-faced rubble in courses with ashlar features and details. It is roofed in red tile with decorative courses and an upper zone of diaper in blue tiles. The style is 13th-century Gothic, inspired by the work of GE Street.

The plan comprises a double-depth range of five bays parallel with the street, with a cross-gabled, right-angle range at each end. The right-hand end and two bays to the left form the earlier 1872 building.

The building rises to two storeys above cellars and features a chamfered offset plinth. The front elevation has gabled dormers and stone stacks. The original entrance doorway is located in the bay to the left of the north cross-gabled range. Above it is an arched canopy within an applied gable supported on corbels, with the archivolt decorated with blind foils. The doorway itself is framed by nook shafts with foliated capitals and a moulded arch, with a Caernarvon-arched lintel and a foiled window in the tympanum.

In the wider bay to the right of the south cross-gabled range is a similar doorway, with arcading framed by miniature buttresses recessed on each side of the upper part of the canopy gable. On either side of this doorway is a single-light window with transom and trefoiled head.

Between the two doorways are three recessed bays. On the ground floor each recess frames a three-light arched window with transom and trefoiled heads to the upper lights. On the first floor, including the doorway bays, each bay has a two-light arched window rising into a dormer gable with a shaft applied to the central mullion and trefoiled heads to the lights. The tympanum of each window arch contains a blind, circular, foiled recess with a carved central boss.

The gable of the front gable wall to the right-hand cross range has convex curves reflecting the curved roof with skylights. Weathered offsets rise in steps on either side of the upper gable wall to the base of a tall gable-end stack. On the ground floor are two two-light trefoil arched windows, each with transom, a quatrefoil light in the arch head, and a hoodmould. At first-floor level is a central corbelled statue niche with flanking shafts and a projecting gablet to the hood.

The front gable wall to the left-hand cross range has a central four-light window with lights of the same height, transom, and trefoiled heads, below a relieving arch. On each side is a similar single-light window. At first-floor level a panel inscribed "PUBLIC LIBRARY" forms the apron for a tall four-light window with transom and trefoiled heads to the lights. The window frame is crowned by a blind cinquefoiled arch enclosing an armorial shield.

The south end elevation is similar to the central bays of the front. In the centre of the roof ridge of the south range is a timber fleche with copper spire, probably originally placed above the roof ridge over the entrance bay at the north end, for which the seating remains.

The interior contains notable features including a quasi-hammerbeam arrangement in the main reading room, which is braced out to support a glazed atrium roof. The upper floor reference library has a composite roof with wrought-iron tension bracing.