Robert Owen Memorial Museum

Free Library and Robert Owen Memorial Museum, Broad Street, Newtown

This elegant and accomplished composition in an Arts and Crafts idiom combines free Renaissance and vernacular revival elements with gestures towards Art Nouveau. The building is mainly two storeys and attics, constructed in a mix of brick, stone, timber-framing, and tile-hanging. It presents steeply pitched tile roofs with an array of gables, deep eaves and verges, and plain bargeboards.

The composition pivots around a corner entrance block. The doorway is positioned across the angle beneath a stone shell-hooded canopy carried on console brackets supported by half columns, with paired panel doors. Above the entrance is a two-storey canted oriel with a balcony at first floor and a continuous band of leaded windows beneath the overhanging eaves.

On the Broad Street elevation, an asymmetrical gabled bay clasps the entrance block. The ground floor is brick banded with stone and has a triple-transomed window with a carved head and scrolled architrave. Above, long uprights of timber framing carry a shallow oriel window to the first floor with a small window beneath the gable apex. The left hand elevation facing Broad Street is ashlar to the ground floor and whitewashed plaster to the first floor, with a dark tile-hung advanced gable carried on brackets above. The first floor features a tall canted oriel window, mullioned and transomed with leaded lights. Narrow one-light transomed windows in recesses flank this feature. The ground floor has paired triple transomed windows with carved heads and leaded lights beneath a continuous hood mould. Putti flank a commemorative plaque at the centre.

To the right, facing Severn Street, a similar gable with flared decoration to the framing is clasped by a tall banded chimney stack corbelled out above the ground floor. This has two similarly enriched transomed windows with a commemorative plaque flanked by putti between them. Beyond this, the entrance block blends into a further range with a plain brick façade, a further doorway with simple timber hood, and leaded windows to the ground floor. Windows in low bands appear in a mezzanine above, immediately below the projecting tile-hanging of the upper floor, which is pierced by mullioned windows. The right end of the elevation to Severn Street is three storeys and an attic, with asymmetric timbered twin gables to jettied attics on the right. Broad eaves with exposed rafters are present throughout. The second floor is tile-hung and pierced by mullioned windows. The first floor has an eight-light mullioned window. A three-light dormer window appears to the left. A simple doorway with canopy opens to the ground floor, with two narrow paired windows to the left.

The interior contains contemporary fittings.