Summary
A Carnegie library of 1910 to 1911 by Ralph B MacColl of Bolton and George E Tonge of Southport, of red Ruabon brick and buff terracotta, in Edwardian Baroque style; incorporating a house of around 1840, of buff sandstone in Scottish Tudor Gothic style.
Reasons for Designation
Wallasey Central Library is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* it is a good example of a substantial urban library dating from before the First World War, and strongly representative of those provided with support from the Carnegie foundation, with good interior planning and ventilation;
* it has a bold architectural composition, good-quality external detailing and a well-appointed interior, including decorative terracotta, plaster and timberwork, parquet and mosaic flooring, and tiling, and is complemented by the retained Earlston House;
* unusually for a library of this date it survives well externally and internally, even retaining original shelving, radiators, and adjustable fresh-air vents.
Historic interest:
* the former house annexed to the library was opened in 1915 as one of the earliest separate children’s libraries in the country.
History
Wallasey Central Library was begun in 1910 and officially opened on 30 September 1911. It formed an extension to the existing library, which had opened in the former Earlston House in 1899.
The Public Libraries Act of 1850 had allowed municipal boroughs of over 10,000 inhabitants in England to fund library buildings and staff from a half-penny rate. This provision was gradually expanded but not widely taken up even after 77 new libraries were opened during Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887.
There is no evidence that Earlston House actually incorporated any earlier building; although it is marked on the tithe map of around 1841 as ‘Old Manor House’, it appears by then to have had roughly its current footprint. It is thought to have been built around 1840, not appearing on Giles’ map of 1836 or Swire and Hutchings’ map of 1830, although there does appear to be a building on the site on Bryant’s map of 1831. Although occupied for much of its first few years by the Scottish merchant and local magistrate George Grant (1787-1862), it seems the house remained the property of the landowner John Marsden of Liscard Castle, as in 1857 it was bought from his executors, by the American merchant Robert Bell. There is no evidence of links with the Penkett family of Sea Bank, as has been suggested in the past. Prior to becoming Earlston, it was known as Rose Mount or Rose Bank.
Thanks to the tenacity of librarian EA Savage, a grant of £9,000 was secured from the Carnegie foundation in August 1908, with the usual provisos that the site be provided for free, and that a full penny local rate should be levied, to be used only for maintenance of the building. While not the first benefactor of multiple libraries in England, Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) was by far the most prolific. Born in Dunfermline, he became an iron and steel magnate in the United States and was passionate about the availability of free libraries, funding approximately 3,000 libraries during his lifetime and beyond, mainly in the USA and Canada, the United Kingdom and Ireland, but also across the globe. The first in England was in Keighley, in 1904.
A design for the new library was published in Building News in August 1909, although this does not quite accord with the finished building. The opening of the new library in 1911 was presided over by the mayor and also attended by the MP for Wirral and the Mayor and Mayoress of Birkenhead, as well as many of the local councillors and council officers. The formal opening was carried out by Alderman James Wright, who was presented with an inscribed gold key. The original decoration combined white ceilings with apple green walls, with russet soffits to the window and door openings.
It was originally thought that the old library would house a children’s room, with the other rooms serving as work rooms for users of the main library, but in 1915 it instead opened as one of the earliest discrete children’s libraries in the country. In March 1941 this was badly damaged by a Luftwaffe bomb, and the north-eastern wing of the house had to be demolished and the link rebuilt.
Around 2010 the windows of the house and library, which had suffered from continual breakage, were replaced in uPVC frames with polycarbonate glazing. The library remains (2024) in use with aspirations to restaff the discrete children’s library in the house.
Details
A Carnegie library of 1910 to 1911 (including an earlier house of around 1840), by Ralph B MacColl of Bolton and George E Tonge of Southport.
MATERIALS: red Ruabon brick, buff terracotta dressings, green slate roof, steel frame. Buff sandstone and blue slate to the house. uPVC windows throughout.
PLAN: standing in the north-west corner of Earlston Gardens park, with the older house attached via a link-bridge, to the west. The library has a T plan, with a two-storey range fronting the road, and a single-storey wing to the south. The house is approximately L-shaped, with a north-south core attached to the library and an east-west range in the north-west corner, and a three-storey round tower in the angle.
EXTERIOR: Edwardian Baroque style. The front façade faces north and is symmetrical, with projecting gabled bays flanking the entrance bay. The gables are pedimented with supporting pilasters, and across the façade there are a plinth band, sill bands to both floors and a first-floor eaves cornice band, forming the heads of the windows and the cornice to the pediments. The entrance projects within its bay and has an elaborate surround with segmental open pediment and festoons, and the inscription PUBLIC/ LIBRARY, the whole supported by pilasters which rise through, with urn finials. The double doors are three-panelled. The stair window above has a shouldered and eared segmental architrave, and arched head with scroll keystone, which rises into a stepped pediment with a cartouche and urn finial. Small windows flanking the entrance, and larger ones the stair window, have surrounds and aprons.
The gabled bays have terracotta parapets, and dentilled cornices to the pediments, which have cartouches in the apex and are broken by a segmental arch over the central light of the first-floor Venetian window. This has an apron below with a festoon, connecting with the head of the central ground-floor window. It and its flanking windows all have surrounds and aprons. A modern access ramp and steps have been added to the entrance. The right return (west wall) of the library is of five windows in a similar style with all of the bands. The first bay has a return of the terracotta parapet, with a garland wreath in relief, and the ground-floor window has a terracotta surround. All of the first-floor windows also have terracotta surrounds, and brick aprons. At the right the link to the old house has a two-centred archway with hood mould, and quoined surrounds to the first-floor windows.
The house to the right projects (with a scored-render return) and is in a Scottish Tudor Gothic style, of regularly-coursed, horizontally-tooled stone, with quoined surrounds and chamfered sills and lintels to the window openings. At the left it has an asymmetrical gabled bay, with linear range to the right. The gable has shaped kneelers and chamfered copings, and a corbelled chimney, with stacked windows to the ground, first and second floors. At the ground floor is a third, intermediate window, and a fourth to the right, and there is also a small window to the right on the first floor. The linear range to the right has a graduated slate roof with ridge stones, and a twice-shouldered full height chimney breast with dormer behind, band and cornice. The first floor has small windows under the eaves, one to the left and two to the right of the chimney. The ground floor has one window to the right, and a door.
The west end of the house is similarly gabled with a corbelled, corniced chimney rising from the first floor, and two-light mullioned window below. At the right the west façade of the core is largely blind, with a broad chimney breast and corniced stack (with modern stainless-steel flue affixed).
The principal façade of the house faces south. The linear range at the left has a gabled bay at the right, with quoins, kneelers and coping and a blind arched lancet in the gable, and a three-light mullioned window to each floor (taller to the ground floor). Roughly central in the wall to the left of the gable are a small two-light mullioned window, and a (blocked) shouldered doorway with flanking light. To the right, in the angle with the core, is a three-storey round tower with conical lead roof and window to each floor. The core to the right has quoined angles and a plinth, and a projecting gabled bay at the left with finial and two-storey, shouldered, square bay window with parapet and three-light ground-floor and two-light first-floor mullioned windows. To the right the eaves are broken by three small gables over the first-floor window heads, and there is a single-storey canted bay window with cornice and parapet, and tall three-light mullioned window. The right return is gabled with a central window to each floor and a blind arched lancet in the gable.
To the right, the brick south wall of the link has another two-centred arch, with quoined window above. Projecting at the right is a two-storey hipped-roofed block, with a tall three-light mullioned and transomed window to the first-floor left and ground-floor right, low three-light mullioned window at the lower left, and small window to the top right. Projecting to the right of this is the single-storey lending library block, with parapet, canted angles and high-level windows between sill and lintel bands. The roof has replacement lanterns. Set back behind can be seen the gabled ends of the two-storey wings of the front range; in the eastern one the first floor has a Venetian window, with an arched window to the ground floor to the right of the lending library block. The east side return of the front range is detailed as per the west side.
INTERIOR: this is well-appointed and little-altered, retaining much plaster and timber decoration, parquet and mosaic flooring, tiling and decorative radiators, as well as much of the original floor plan.
The entrance has outer and inner vestibules; the outer one is barrel-vaulted with rich foliate plaster decoration, terracotta walls with eared architraves to side doorways, and a basket-arched inner entrance with glazed doors with Art Nouveau handles. The inner vestibule has round niches with shell arches, and a mosaic floor. The inner entrance has replacement doors but retains its arched, leaded overlight with dentilled transom, and side lights.
The vestibules open into the main hall, which has a parquet floor, shallow barrel vault with skylights, and triple arcade to each side; the arches retain the original glazed screens, with openings in the frontmost arch on each side, accessing the former reference library (to the right) and reading room (to the left). The dado has rich aquamarine glazed tiles. The arcades have pilasters with drops, which continue above the elaborate cornice as bands across the vault, richly decorated with fruit and foliage. The south wall is open below the cornice, with two square columns; the tympanum above has a wreath with foliate decoration. The lending library to the south has a ceiling with deep skylights and supported by Ionic columns, and retains its shelving (possibly rearranged) and manual vents below the windows.
The reference library and reading room have arches in their south walls, Ionic pilasters to the side walls, and ceilings with richly-decorated beams and plaster roundels and borders between.
The front wall of the main hall is also arcaded and the stair rises from the left arch, with full-height tiling matching the hall’s dado, and timber handrails. A modern security lobby has been added to the half-landing. The tiles continue as the dado of the upper landing, which accesses the former lecture hall (west) and room for magazines and exhibitions (east – now housing the reference section and newspaper archives). Both rooms retain their decorative door architraves and are vaulted with decorated ribs and vents, and the east room retains some original shelving. The lecture hall has an inserted partition to eaves level. In the south-west corner a secondary stair descends to the ground floor, and there is access to the bridge link. Metal-bound fireproof doors access the old house from the link.
The surviving portion of the house retains much of its plan form and has some early library furniture upstairs such as shelves and committee table. It also retains window shutters and other joinery, in particular to the former children’s library area on the ground floor, although the rooms have been opened out. A plaque within a basket-arched recess in the principal ground-floor room records the opening of the children’s library in 1915 and its reopening in 1950 after repair of the Second World War bomb damage. The stone spiral stair of the tower also descends to the basement which retains stone floors and a wine cellar with brick and stone shelving.
This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 11 November 2024 to correct a typo in the text
