Pontypool Public Library

Pontypool Public Library is a public library built in the Edwardian Baroque style. It is constructed of red brick, with the front elevation glazed and featuring a plinth made of coursed rock-faced pennant limestone rubble and dressings in Portland limestone ashlar. The roofs are covered in Welsh slate. The building consists of a two-storey front block with a projecting single-storey wing at the back.

The street elevation is divided into three bays, with arched windows on the ground floor flanking a recessed central entrance. The facade is accentuated by giant pilasters that are wider at the corners and have console caps in the centre. The Portland plinth extends up to the impost level of the ground floor windows, which, along with the door, are framed by arched architraves. The windows feature three-light mullion and transom designs. On the upper floor, the outer bays have paired two-light windows with stone mullions, and a wider mullion between them topped with a console cap. The central window is tripartite, also framed in stone, with the central light featuring an apron and a segmental pediment. The apron bears the inscription "Public Library 1908." The building has an eaves frieze and a hipped roof with a central brick gable above the entrance. There is a red brick stack to the right and an altered domed ventilator at the centre of the roof ridge. The side elevation includes an additional stone quoin pilaster, while the rear elevation is very plain.

Inside, there is a large room on the ground floor with a central hall that leads to a stair with a wrought iron railing. The hall is separated from the adjacent rooms by a three-arch colonnade featuring segmental arches and panelled square columns. Two upper rooms serve as the office and the Reference Library. The interior is plain but remarkably unaltered. Due to the sloping ground, there is also a lower floor that contains one large room supported by two cast iron columns.