Kensington Central Library
Kensington Central Library is a Grade II* listed building on Hornton Street and Phillimore Walk, Kensington, London. It was built in 1958–60 by the architect E. Vincent Harris on the site of The Abbey, a Gothic house which had been constructed for a Mr Abbot in 1880 and destroyed by bombing in 1944. It was opened by the Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother on 13 July 1960. The building was designed in a traditional, English, renaissance-style. There were demonstrations against the project by those who advocated for the building to be in a modern style.
The public library is within the Royal [Borough of Kensington and Chelsea] and is managed as part of a tri-borough integrated library and archive service, alongside those of Westminster and London [Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham|Hammersmith and Fulham].
On the south side of the library, facing Phillimore Walk, are two statues of a lion and a unicorn, both holding the Royal Arms of the United Kingdom. They were sculpted by William McMillan in order to reflect the "Royal" status of the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.