Kanturk Library

Attached three-bay three-storey former house and shop, built c. 1900, with full-height return and lower three-storey addition to rear of return. Currently in use as library. Pitched slate roof with red brick chimneystacks, some cast-iron rainwater goods, and having moulded limestone eaves course. Timber bargeboards to east and west gables. Flemish bond red brick walls to upper floors with chamfered limestone quoins. Coursed rubble limestone walls to gables and rendered walls to rear. Camber-headed window openings with replacement windows, and render sills. Chamfered limestone shopfront, having segmental-headed display windows flanking doorway, with chamfered limestone voussoirs with raised keystones, and having replacement timber windows and door. Terrazzo floor to entrance.

This is an unusual building which dominates Main Street and provides and interesting extra dimensions to the streetscape in terms of scale and texture. The use of brick is not common in the town, and the combination of red brick and chamfered limestone is even rarer. It was formerly a drapery, and its transition to its current use a library is an interesting and worthwhile one for an old building.