Description

LICHFIELD

SK1109NW BIRD STREET 1094-1/4/38 (West side) 11/02/93 Former Public Library and Art Gallery and attached balustrades

GV II

Public library and museum. 1857-9. By Bidlake and Lovatt. Brick with buff brick facades, ashlar dressings; parapeted roof. Right-angle plan with inset octagonal entrance tower to angle to left. Renaissance style. 2 storeys with basement; 3-window range. Panelled brick plinth over basement; rusticated end piers and cornice to impost level and cornice over ground floor; top dentilled brick frieze and modillioned ashlar cornice. Entrance tower has rusticated piers and entablature to ground floor; high plinth and entablature to 1st floor, and cupola with dentilled cornice and domical vault with wind vane. Round-headed entrance has tall key to plain fanlight over C20 door; flanking round-headed windows with brick archivolts and ashlar keys; plinth has square ashlar plaque inscribed: FREE/ LIBRARY/ AND/ MUSEUM, flanking roundels; 1st floor has 3 round-headed windows; round-headed openings to cupola. 3-window range has windows with rubbed brick flat arches and 8-pane sashes with 2 ashlar antae with lotus capitals, tympana above have archivolts and keys; 1st floor has blind arcading of 3 pairs of round arches with ashlar colonnettes; two C20 buttresses with continuations of cornices. Left return facing Museum Gardens is 6-window range, the windows grouped in pairs with C20 buttresses between. Ashlar statue of sailor with HMS POWERFUL to his hat band on corbel to right end; said to date from the Boer War, origin unknown. Rear is simpler, with lean-to projection with blocked wide segmental-headed entrance and flanking niches. Right return is plain, with C20 addition to rear. Entrance tower flanked by low brick walls and ashlar balustrading of 4-centred arches, piers with chamfered angles, similar in style to those to causeway (qv). INTERIOR: geometrical stair with slender iron balusters and wreathed handrail; top-lit 1st floor. (Buildings of England: Pevsner N: Staffordshire: London: 1974-: P.192; Clayton H: Cathedral City: Lichfield: 1977-: P.102-5).

Listing NGR: SK1140909629

External Links

• Wikidata Q26504639

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Farrow & Ball How to Decorate: Transform your home with paint & paper
• 
  Period Property Manual (New Ed)
• 
  Herefordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Sussex: East with Brighton and Hove (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Oxfordshire: North and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Cornwall (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)