Shackerley has supplied two of the most visible new external architectural elements at Liverpool Central Library, now reopened to the public after a 3-year £50m project to transform the facility into a dramatic, state-of-the-art civic centre.

Behind the imposing Grade II listed Victorian frontage of original library, part of the iconic William Brown Street Cultural Quarter, is a stunning new five-storey library and archive repository building, the external elevations of which have been predominantly clad with a Sureclad® ceramic granite ventilated façade system supplied by Shackerley. The new façades have a distinctive style, featuring randomly positioned panels of varying widths in a palette of carefully selected natural tones.

In addition to supplying over 2200m² of prefabricated ‘installation ready’ ceramic granite cladding, Shackerley also utilised its specialist in-house facilities at its ISO 9001 accredited Lancashire factory to create the Library’s towering ‘Literary Wall’ – a gleaming black roll-call of famous authors, playwrights, poets and lyricists associated with Liverpool, engraved in gold lettering on large format solid granite panels, cut to bespoke sizes measuring up to 2800x600x30mm.

Architect Ben Aston of Austin-Smith: Lord, commented on the specification:

“Shackerley offers ceramic granite in an extensive range of colours and finishes from which we selected our tonal palette of neutral colours with a natural unpolished finish.  The flexibility of the Sureclad® system allowed panels of different sizes to be used, achieving the non-monolithic appearance we were looking to create.”  

“For the Literary Wall we wanted a high quality polished black stone that would retain its good looks in all weathers. Granite is by no means an easy material to work with but Shackerley had the specialist in-house cutting, drilling and engraving facilities to supply everything we needed.”   

For further information on Shackerley’s ceramic granite cladding and specialist prefabrication services, please contact Shackerley on 0800 783 039, email info@shackerley.com  or visit www.shackerley.com