Description

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 13/02/2018

TQ3477NE
636-1/38/547

SOUTHWARK
OLD KENT ROAD (south east side)
No. 682 Former Camberwell Public Library and Livesey Museum

(Formerly listed as No. 682, Camberwell Public Library and Livesey Museum)

II
Former public library and museum. Dated 1890. By RP Whellock. For the Parish of Camberwell.

MATERIALS: brick in English bond, with stone, terracotta and rubbed brick dressings. Gable facing roofs of slate, that to the hall with a clerestory; all openings are flat-arched unless otherwise stated.

PLAN: hall or reading room, rectangular in plan, to the left of the site, which projects to the line of the Old Kent Road pavement. Internally four bays, an open timber roof consisting of an arched tie beam, supporting the lower range of the roof, from which springs a king strut supporting the clerestory; each truss tied by a metal bar of original date. The southernhalf of the building destroyed during the war.

EXTERIOR: one-window range. Elevation of hall: canted bay with tripartite windows to first floor level, a round-arched, keyed window below; the bay topped by stone balustrade; gable defined by a elliptical-arched recess pierced by an elliptical light to the hall roof; to either side of bay, entablature band with frieze of swags; corners of quoined brick; upper area of gable with scrolls surrounding an open book; coping treated as a raking dentil cornice; ornamental weather vane at roof peak; on the coved sill of the bay is the inscription "Camberwell Public Library Anno. Dom. 1890".

Plinth of brick unites hall with entrance range, recessed to rear, forming a forecourt: three and a half storeys and a two-window range: entrance recessed by elliptical diaphragm arch; small, elaborately moulded light to upper right spandrel of arch; frieze band between ground and first floor has baskets of fruit in high relief; paired windows above set in Tuscan aedicule of two bays, which continues to second floor as a shallow rectangular bay framing a pair of windows; this centrepiece finishes in a broken segmental gable, pierced by a round, keyed light; gable eaves are flared; gable peak finished with a diminutive decorative gable in Flemish Renaissance style.

INTERIOR: not inspected.

The hall and entrance ranges only are included; the post-WWII extensions to the rear which enclose an open courtyard are not of special architectural interest.

Listing NGR: TQ3464377670

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26665506

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

• 
  Lancashire: Manchester and the South-East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Penguin Art & Architecture)
• 
  London 3: North West: North West v. 3 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  [(Bedfordshire, Huntingdon and Peterborough)] [By (author) Nikolaus Pevsner] published on (January, 1968)
• 
  London 4: North: North v. 4 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  The Listed Buildings and Other Principal Structures at the Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abbey