Patrick Comerford
In my walk around Belgravia and Pimlico earlier this month, the impressive works of architecture I wanted to see include the streets and squares designed and laid out by Thomas Cubitt for the Grosvenor estate, with their elegant Victorian and Edwardian terraces, Saint Peter’s Church on Eaton Square, Gothic churches such as Saint Saviour’s, Saint Gabriel’s and Saint Michael’s, and Victoria Station with its Imperial Baroque Revival version of the French Renaissance style.
But as I watched the daily rush, I wondered how many commuters notice the Victoria Library at 160 Buckingham Palace Road, an architecturally attractive building on the corner with Elizabeth Street and close to both Victoria Station and Victoria Coach Station?
The Victoria Library is a Grade II building designed in 1892-1894 by the architect Abert J Bolton as the public lending library for the parish of Saint George’s, Hanover Square. It was built on land given by Hugh Lupus Grosvenor (1825-1899), first Duke of Westminster, and was designed by Bolton after a design competition.
Bolton is best known for his work for the Grosvenor estate in 1889-1895 at 87-102 Mount Street with a return into South Audley Street, purpose-built shops and flats that form what is regarded as one of the finest listed terraces in central London.
The reconstruction of Mount Street began when Bolton won a limited competition in 1884-1885 for a Vestry Hall for Saint George’s Parish on the site of No 103 after Saint George’s Vestry bought the freehold. He then built the adjacent Nos 87-102 to the west, together with the deep return plot to South Audley Street and the library in Chapel Place North. The Duke of Westminster had hoped but failed to get Bolton to follow the designs of Ernest George and Harold Peto at 104-111 Mount Street, on the other side of the vestry hall.
The Victoria Library on Buckingham Palace Road, designed by AJ Bolton, is of special architectural interest because of the quality of its exuberant Queen Anne exterior with its stone dressings on the façade, terracotta dressings to the rear and its substantially complete interior, with a surviving book hoist and galleries and ornamental ironwork.
The library is also a relatively early example of an institution like this in London. Public libraries from the late 19th and early 20th century survive in good numbers in England and a number of them are of special architectural interest as reflections of the civic or philanthropic pride that created them.
Libraries dating from 1850 to 1914, such as Bolton’s Victoria Library, often show a good degree of articulate architectural expression, and some retain interior details and even may remain substantially unaltered and without extension.
The Victoria Library on Buckingham Palace Road was built of red brick laid in a Flemish bond with Portland Stone dressings, and some terracotta to the rear, and it has a slate roof behind a lowered parapet.
Bolton’s plan is of a three-part composition with two double-height halls to the rear, an entrance foyer, a stair hall and two-storey-and-attic accommodation to the front.
The Buckingham Palace Road façade is a three-bay composition with a central porch carrying a four-light mullion and transom window breaking forward with a narrow single lights to either side.
The lettering carved in the stonework between the ground and first floors reads ‘SG HS Public Library’, the initials meaning Saint George’s Hanover Square. There are four-light mullion and transom casement windows at either side. The windows on the first floor have Corinthian pilasters and a frieze, while those on the second floor have a greater profusion of pilasters, set over the cornice.
The rear elevation has two brick gables with double-height windows, and the one furthest south has an oculus window above. Before and set between the gables is a projecting porch that leads to the ‘Reading Room’ that is signposted in terracotta along with the date 1892. The inscription forms part of an imposing pedimented terracotta door case topped by finials.
The highly decorative wrought iron railings at the front are consistent with the similar railings seen along the adjacent terrace.
Inside, the Victoria Library has a coffered ceiling above the vestibule, leading to a foyer from which rises a straight single-flight stair with cast-iron balustrade, and there is some panelling to reading area in the inner foyer. There is a geometric ribbed moulded decorative plaster ceiling in the first floor rooms of the front block.
The lending library, which is the former reading room, has a first floor gallery on three sides supported on columns with a cast-iron balustrade under an open timber clerestoried roof comprised of three queen post trusses, with the posts formed of small classical columns.
The former lending library has a gallery with a more elaborate ironwork balustrade and its original fixed shelving. This hall also retains the original book hoist: there books for lending that were not openly accessible to the public had to be ordered from the catalogues once located in the hall - this is now an extremely rare feature for a library.
I can hardly imagine members of the royal family taking a stroll from Buckingham Palace along Buckingham Palace to borrow books from the Victoria Library or to browse the shelves of their local library. But the Victoria Library remains an architecturally attractive building and a centre for reading, research and community interaction. As well as its core book collection, it has a flexible cultural space that hosts diverse local activities, including community workshops and readings.
Around the corner and close-by on Elizabeth Street, the Thomas Cubitt is a Georgian pub whose name is a reminder of Thomas Cubitt, the master builder who was instrumental in developing the streets and squares of Belgravia and Pimlico.
Almost beside the Victoria Library, on the facing corner site of Buckingham Palace Road and Elizabeth Street, Victoria Coach Station at 164 Buckingham Palace Road is one of London’s most prominent Art Deco works . But more about that landmark building, hopefully, in the days to come.
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