Dalton Public Library

Dalton Public Library is a library built in 1903 for the Dalton-in-Furness Urban Council, with funding from Andrew Carnegie. The building is constructed of snecked limestone with red ashlar sandstone dressings and features a graduated slate roof. It has three storeys and an attic, with a facade that consists of one bay set forward and gabled, and three bays on the right return.

The library has a chamfered and rock-faced plinth and large quoins. The ground and first floors are adorned with cross-windows in chamfered surrounds, and there are string courses across the transoms. The central entrance features panelled double doors, a fanlight with wrought-iron tracery, and a keyed archivolt, flanked by two tall windows on the right. The first bay includes an ashlar, three-light bay window with narrow side-lights, topped with a cornice and corner pedestals that hold gadrooned vases. Below the ashlar limestone frieze, inscribed 'CARNEGIE FREE LIBRARY 1903', the first floor has a moulded sill band and drip-moulds, with the first bay showcasing a canted bay window of 1:2:1 lights, featuring a guilloche on the apron and swept parapet copings.

On the second floor, there are two-light mullioned windows with dentilled, moulded sills and drip-moulds. The window in the first bay has a shaped apron and a scrolled drip-mould, from which a shaft rises to cut a string course and divides a louvred two-light attic opening with a scrolled hood-mould. Corbelled shafts rise at each end of the gable, linking to moulded finials set on shaped kneelers, with stepped gable copings and an apex finial. The eaves over bays two to four feature a corbel table and decorative cast-iron rainwater goods. The left end has a stack with an offset and cornice, while the right end gable is treated as bay one. The right return has a twin-gabled, flat elevation in the same style.

Inside, the entrance and stair hall have a tiled dado, and there is a stone staircase with a square, cast-iron newel post and simple cast-iron balustrade panels leading to a wooden handrail.