Description

ISLINGTON

TQ3185SW FIELDWAY CRESCENT 635-1/37/395 (North East side) 29/09/72 Central Library (Formerly Listed as: HOLLOWAY ROAD Public Library)

II

Public Library. Dated 1906 on the foundation stone and elsewhere, altered and enlarged to Fieldway Crescent front in 1973-6. By Henry T. Hare. The principal front of Hare's building faces Holloway Road, and is faced in Portland stone, and there is a 1906 wing in Fieldway Crescent of red brick set in English bond with stone dressings; roof of slate so far as visible. Two storeys over basement; the first floor not windowed on Holloway Road, but the front reads as five bays, the outer bays projecting slightly. Deep single-storey porch of rusticated stone to right-hand bay with engaged Roman Doric columns carrying a segmental open pediment with datestone and floral drops in the tympanum; flat-arched entrance with double keystones; wrought iron gates to entrance and wrought iron grille to left return; dated lead rainwater head in angle of porch and principal front. The principal front has a base of ashlar, the rest decorated with banded rustication; three window bays to centre set in round, hollow-chamfered arches, the windows flat-arched and flanked by engaged Ionic columns carrying entablature with double keystone and broken pediment enclosing a cartouche; the windows have original slim wooden mullions and transoms with leaded glazing; rising out of each cartouche, a scrolled bracket each carrying a different emblematic female head; circular niches with architraves between the brackets and linked to them by festoons; fascia over all three windows lettered 'ISLINGTON CENTRAL LIBRARY'. The outer bays have, to the right, the porch and an aedicular niche with a statue of Bacon to the first floor, and, to the left, the foundation stone with small flat-arched window above, and first-floor niche with a statue of Spenser. Pulvinated frieze to the outer bays; mutule cornice, balustrade to central bays, stepped parapet with wreathed ornament to outer bays. The return of the principal facade to Fieldway Crescent has a tripartite window to the ground floor with Ionic pilasters and engaged Ionic columns carrying entablature and central segmental pediment; and a round-arched first-floor window with eared architrave, keystone, and scrolled outer mouldings; a lower, two-storey pedimented wing projects to the left with flat-arched entrance and first-floor flat-arched window under an open segmental pediment. Rear wing of two storeys and four-window range stepped back in Fieldway Crescent: flat-arched windows, stone dressings, moulded stone eaves cornice and bracketed gutters. INTERIOR: : the block facing into Holloway Road has been largely gutted internally; but the rear wing retains the large former reading room on the ground floor with tall paired windows to the south-west separated by engaged Doric columns, a four-light window to the south-east similarly treated, and a coffered ceiling; above this the former reference library with original panelling incorporating bookcases in six bays, eccentrically large scrolled brackets rising from piers to support entablature to panelled and barrel-vaulted ceiling; segmental sidelights, rooflights and circular windows at either end with archivolt, foliage drops and festoons.

Listing NGR: TQ3134385060

External Links

• Islington Central Library official website
• Wikidata Q26580587

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

• 
  Wiltshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Suffolk: West: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Worcestershire Revised Edition (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Suffolk: East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Sussex: West (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds: Cotswolds Pt. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)