Case study · Civic · Harrowfold

Corn Exchange Library

The town's 1868 market hall, empty for eleven years, is now its library: a restored roof lantern, an oak reading gallery between the cast-iron columns and a small brick pavilion for a front door.

Location: Corn Street, Harrowfold
Typology: Civic, conversion
Completed: September 2024
Floor area: 1,180 m²
Contract value: £2.9 million
Client: Harrowfold Town Council

The Corn Exchange Library at dusk from Corn Street, arched windows lit and the terracotta pavilion in front — Corn Street, opening nightPhoto placeholder

Drawings

The same building, three ways.

Plan Section Axonometric

Ground floor plan of the Corn Exchange Library: reading room between two rows of cast-iron columns, stacks under the new gallery, children's corner and the entrance pavilion on Corn Street — Ground floor plan

Section B–B across the hall: brick walls, timber trusses, the restored lantern, the oak reading gallery and the entrance pavilion beyond — Section B–B

Axonometric of the Corn Exchange from the south-east: brick hall with roof lantern and the new terracotta entrance pavilion — Axonometric, south-east

Swipe sideways to pan the drawing →

ProjectCorn Exchange Library

DrawingGround floor planSection B–BAxonometric, south-east

Scale1:2001:100Not to scale

SheetPL-127 / 01PL-127 / 02PL-127 / 03

Existing fabric
New work
Section line

PlanOne room, kept whole. Stacks sit under the gallery, so the middle of the hall stays free for long tables.

SectionThe gallery hangs off the column line and stops short of the windows, so the arches stay readable from inside.

AxonometricThe pavilion is deliberately small and low: a doorway with a canopy, not a second building.

The brief

A market hall becomes a reading room.

Brief from Harrowfold Town Council after a two-year public consultation.

The council needed a new library and owned an empty listed hall on Corn Street. The danger was filling it: mezzanines, partitions and a café would have bought floor area and lost the room everyone remembered from market days.

We kept the hall as one space. The roof lantern was rebuilt with new glazing, so daylight falls on the reading tables. A slim oak gallery between the columns holds the adult stacks, and the only new building is a brick pavilion on the street, carrying the lifts, toilets and a door that is easy to find.

visits in the first year: 61,000
of the 1868 fabric kept: 94%
gas boilers left, all heat pumps: 0

The reading room: long tables under the lantern, cast-iron columns and the oak gallery on the left — The reading room, from the pavilion doorPhoto placeholder

People walk in and look up. That is the whole design, really, and it works.
Moira Tench, Harrowfold Libraries

Credits

Who built it with us.

Architect: Plinth Architects: Hester Quaile, Dev Marwaha, Sol Petrakis
Conservation: Lantern Heritage Partnership
Structure: Callow Engineering
Services: Fenner Hale Associates
Builder: Quarrender Construction
Photography: Your photographer here

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