Cornmill Square Library, Lawyer's Brae, Galashiels

Cornmill Square Library, located on Lawyer's Brae in Galashiels, was designed by Hay and Henderson and completed in 1873, with extensions added in 1889, 1913, and 1932. There were later internal alterations made by Frank White between 1965 and 1967. This library is a three-storey, three-bay building constructed in a Gothic style with a rectangular plan.

The prominent central bay features a crow-stepped gable adorned with decorative ball finials. It has a later semi-circular keystone arched doorway, framed by a corniced entablature supported by half-fluted Ionic columns on plinths. A corbel-bracketed balcony on the second floor includes a Venetian window inscribed with 'Free Library 1873'. The southeast side has a squared two-storey crenellated stair window, while the northwest side features a later two-storey canted crenellated window with a circular date stone from 1913 above its crow-stepped gable. The building is primarily constructed of smooth dressed ashlar with chamfered arises around the openings, and the 1889 extension is made of coursed whin rubble with stugged sandstone margins. A string course on the first floor steps down on the side elevations, and there is a stone-bracketed eaves course and a crenellated wallhead on the northwest side.

The library has predominantly four-pane timber sash and case windows, steep pitched slate roofs with large rooflights and triangular slated ventilators, and chamfered corniced ashlar end stacks. The box section cast-iron gutters, square hoppers, and downpipes are recessed into the string course.

The boundary walls surrounding the library are made of stone, with cast iron railings.

Inside, there are offices off a central corridor and a wide staircase from the 1930s featuring a horizontally styled painted metal balustrade that leads to an open-plan reading room on the upper floor. This reading room has a Jacobean-style arched braced corbelled panelled wooden ceiling with pendants and rooflights between the trusses. There is a decorative cast-iron balcony frieze over the original mezzanine in the reading room, along with an additional mezzanine added in the 1960s. The division between the 1874 and 1889 sections of the building is visible in the roof structure, and there are glazed four-panel doors. The ground floor rooms to the north feature Edwardian panelling and plasterwork.