Campbeltown Library And Museum, Hall Street, Campbeltown

Campbeltown Library and Museum, designed by John James Burnet and built in 1897–8, is a single and two-storey building over a concealed basement, arranged in an asymmetrical L-plan and crowned with a lantern cupola. The architectural style is Free Scots Renaissance, displaying nine bays on one principal elevation and eight on another. The walls are constructed of bull-faced, squared and snecked rubble with contrasting polished red sandstone dressings. Corbel courses feature on the canted bays.

The south-east elevation, facing St John Street, comprises nine bays grouped as three-three-one-two, including an angled canted bay at the outer right. The entrance at the seventh bay is bold and Mannerist in character, with engaged columns supporting individual entablatures and urns. Above the door sits an architraved panel with carved inscription, and higher still an aediculed window in a gable topped by a diminutive apex pediment. To the left of the entrance are three tall, closely-spaced canted windows, mullioned and transomed, with a balustraded parapet featuring segmentally-arched niches in the dividing dies. The three bays at the outer left have windows set in round-arched panels. To the right of the door is a single bay with a matching canted bay at the outer right, again with a balustraded parapet and niched dies as described above.

The north-east elevation, facing Hall Street, has eight bays, including an angled canted bay at the outer left. The three bays at the outer left form the advanced canted end of the principal front, with transomed windows. The centre window has a corniced and bracketted mullion supporting flanking decorative attached columns and a segmentally-pedimented panel containing a carved armorial. The fourth bay is a single-storey corniced and parapetted projection set in the re-entrant of the canted bays to the left, with bipartite windows and a service hatch at ground floor and basement. An L-section wallhead stack sits in the re-entrant angle, adjacent to a dormer window with a swan-neck stone pediment, and a canted stair tower with slit windows breaking the eaves under a polygonal roof to the right.

The bays to the right of this projection feature a battered cill course at ground floor level and a mutuled cornice at the eaves, linked by recessed full-height panels with roll-moulded arrises containing bipartite windows at ground and first floors, with carved reliefs of tradesmen between. Carved panels with monograms appear between the bays at first floor level.

The south-west elevation, facing Shore Street, shows the gable end of the principal front with a corniced window at upper level in a round-arched recess. A small semicircular pediment sits at the apex of the gable.

The rear courtyard has two elevations. The south-west rear courtyard elevation has its first four bays detailed as the corresponding bays of the north-east elevation, except for a door at the third bay ground floor and uncarved panels between windows. The fifth bay features an access stair leading down to the basement with a curved timber sliding ship's hatch cover, a window at ground floor with corniced cill and roll-moulded arrises, and a coped wallhead breaking the eaves. Above is a blind, corniced opening with chamfered arrises. The sixth bay has a door at ground floor under a covered walkway, with a roll-moulded surround set in a round-arched recess, keystone with corbel above supporting a roof purlin, and a window at first floor with a triangular stone dormerhead containing a monogrammed panel.

The north-east rear courtyard elevation features a covered walkway spanning the ground with a catslide roof swept down from the main pitch on corbelled timber brackets (no posts). This comprises four bays grouped one-two-one, with a cement seat at the base and a corresponding corniced wall-seat opposite, and a tiled and granolithic walkway between. Mullioned windows with chamfered arrises appear throughout: bipartite at the bay to the left, tripartite at the centre bays. The museum entrance door at the bay to the outer right has a roll-moulded upper surround and a carved banner across the lintel bearing the script "MUSEUM", with a keystone at centre featuring a carved bearded mask and hourglass.

Windows are timber sash and case and casement, multi-pane to most openings, with stained and leaded upper sashes to the reading rooms and plate glass at the library first floor bipartite windows. The entrance doors are modern timber. Two-leaf vertically-boarded timber doors with stylised hinges lead to the garden, with a six-panel inner door having an angled square glazed pane at centre. The roofs are covered in green slate, piended at the canted end and stair tower, and curved over the bartizan. An octagonal glazed cupola sits on a square slate-hung timber plinth at the crossing of the principal ridges, with a bellcast roof over a bracketted cornice, surmounted by a miniature louvred capping cupola. Ridges and cupola are terminated with lead finials. Fourteen-pane rooflights sit over each pitch above the museum. Cast-iron gutters and downpipes are present, with profiled gutters at the principal eaves and a decorative hopper at the Librarian's house. Bull-faced, squared and snecked stacks have red ashlar dressings and cornices. There is a six-flue stack at the ridge over the party wall between library and museum, a three-flue L-plan wallhead stack at the Lady's reading room, and a four-flue apex stack at the north-west gable of the Librarian's house, all with circular cans, mostly of original pattern. Red sandstone ashlar skew copes with dressed rubble block skewputts feature at the principal gables.

The interior retains an outstanding original decorative scheme and craftsmanship. The entrance hall has a canted panelled timber entrance vestibule with paired inner entrance doors featuring six-pane glazed uppers and original brass ironmongery, rectangular fan lights above fronted by paired balusters, and an open segmental pediment at centre. Two-arch arcaded openings in the flanking walls have red sandstone ashlar voussoirs and octagonal piers between, with etched and leaded glass infill bearing names of famous authors, and glazed two-leaf doors with original ironmongery to the reading rooms. The garden door beyond to the left has carved shields and a cornice above, with a doorway to the right. A round-arched opening in the rear wall (opposite the entrance) leads to the former closed library. A glazed canted timber screen with flanking glazed doors is surmounted by a plain balustrade with a clock by Thomas Hunter of Campbeltown in a segmentally-arched panel at centre. Behind is a U-plan timber desk (formerly for the closed library) with an indicator board and sixteen-pane skylight in the ceiling. The open timber roof has four crossed major beams on stone corbels supporting the lantern, with timber board lining to roof and lantern. An ormolu and timber model of the Temple of Solomon, presented in 1920 by Duncan McKinnon of Balnakill, sits in a pyramidal glass and timber case with octagonal legs.

The Ladies Reading Room has panelled wainscoting, upswept at window reveals. A tall fireplace in the north-west wall comprises a cast-iron grate in a tiled arch, red ashlar surround with wide lintel, and a timber chimneypiece comprising a lugged architrave with flanking pilasters and mutuled corniced shelf. A plaster cartouche centres the chimneybreast with an open bracketted pediment intersecting with a plain cornice. The coved ceiling has simple strapwork. The original timber reading desk with hat stands at the ends remains, along with chairs (some swivelling) bearing the Campbeltown Public Library 1898 monogram on their curved backs.

The Men's Reading Room features a panelled dado, upswept at window reveals, and a large fireplace comprising a cast-iron grate within a tiled arch, red ashlar surround, and a timber chimneypiece with lugged architrave and bracketted shelf, continued as hoodmoulds over the museum entrance doors. Corniced stone corbels support panelled timber beams, with coved plaster ceilings between.

The museum has embossed leather-covered entrance doors with glazed uppers from the reading room. A low timber shelf sits over cast-iron heating pipes at floor level, with plain panelling to cill level and vertical boarding to walls above with a cornice at top. Gas fittings remain in window recesses. A secondary, larger cornice above is supported on and advanced by scrolled brackets. The barrel vaulted plaster trabeated ceiling has three semicircular ribs supporting a twenty-eight-pane cupola at centre, with a bold bracketted cornice with triglyphs around the opening. Large scrolled brackets at the cupola ends intersect with circular, architraved ventilators. An advanced chimney breast in the north-east wall has a large fireplace matching that in the men's reading room, with a portrait of J. M. Hall of Killean and Tangy above. A good selection of timber display cases survives.

The Librarian's House is a two-bay, two-storey house adjoining the rear elevation of the museum. The entrance door to Shore Street sits at the bay to the right, with a string course at first floor articulated around an uncarved armorial panel over the door and a dormer window breaking the eaves above, having a corniced cill and semicircular stone dormerhead. A circular bartizan with two windows is corbelled out at the corner to the outer left.

Dwarf walls to the street elevations have red sandstone ashlar copes surmounted by wrought-iron railing, terminated with Art Nouveau influenced decorative ironwork at the main entrance. Wrought-iron gates appear at Hall Street and Shore Street. Square, stop-chamfered red sandstone ashlar piers with carved floreate swags and shallow pyramidal caps flank the main entrance, and appear at the Librarian's house and street corners.