'Unpretentious and efficiently modern' ... Alton library. Photograph: David Levene  Tucked within some of the least spoiled countryside in Hampshire, Alton is a town of two halves. On the one hand, it remains a traditional English market town, complete with an ancient parish church, three independent butchers, a brewery, a toyshop, a weekly market and a local museum. On the other, its Georgian high street was brutally assaulted in the 1960s and 1970s by a wave of witless concrete design, and is now packed with aggressive traffic.  So when local and county councils agreed that Alton needed a new public library, the question of style might well have been a thorny one. Should the new design be a government-approved "icon" complete with enigmatic roof and cosmogenic interior? Or should it be designed in a safe, dreary "planning permission vernacular" style - as seen in the unimaginative forms of the new community centres, local clinics and ring-road supermarkets dulling down the rural landscape?  The finished library, which cost £1.25m, is neither a compromise between old and new, nor a parody of local styles. Seen from the top of Vicarage Hill - the winding street that leads down to the new building from the railway station - it is a fine, unexpected design, whose steep pitched roof and slit-like upper floor windows catch the eye, without looking out of place in these Georgian and Victorian surroundings.  "Alton is a market town with a rural heritage," says Martin Hallum, project architect of the new library. "We knew we had to talk to as many people as possible, to address their fears while raising their hopes. The old library was housed in a former Civil Defence tin and concrete hut. We could only aspire upwards, but, as architects, we needed to get as many people on our side as possible.  "Perhaps I might have liked to have designed a more obviously modern building at one stage, but as we pushed on with the project, I began to see how we might give shape to a building that could be modern without following fashion at the same time as being somehow traditional without being old-fashioned."  And that is just what the new building achieves. It is like a handsome modern barn, neatly crafted from handmade red bricks and roof tiles (from a yard in nearby Romsey), and making robust use of oak joinery. The brickwork of the south front is punctured by huge windows, which bring daylight into the furthest recesses of the essentially open-plan interior. These are fronted by handmade oak sun louvres that look terrific. So does the simple timber bench on the pavement in front of them. Designed as a stopping place for passers-by wanting to soak up some sun, the bench has inevitably found an additional role as a launch-pad for skateboards. It is tough enough to cope.  The interior, arranged over three floors, is equally simple, unpretentious and efficiently modern. The ground floor is the lending library with a self-service cafe, and separate reading areas for children and teenagers. The first floor boasts a desk of computers, a reference library and a Jane Austen study in one big-windowed corner. Under the pitched roof, the librarians have their comfortable office.  The bookcases are handsome things assembled from varnished plywood. Chairs and tables are comfortable and the lighting throughout is excellent. Alton Library is not, thankfully, some whizzy new "ideas store": it is, quite simply, a great place to read and write. And it is a model of how to design and craft a functional new building in an old town suspicious of what modernising means: in Alton's case, junk, junk and junk again.  The heroes of the day are not free-thinking architects wanting to break away from the new tyranny of "wow factor" design, but Hampshire County Council's long-established architectural unit - one of the very last of England's once highly respected local authority architects' departments. Previously led by Colin Stansfield Smith (who won the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture in 1991) and now under the direction of Steve Clow, the department has continued to produce an exceptionally high standard of public design. Employing 57 architects, six landscape architects, six land surveyors, 10 interior designers and 15 clerks of works, the architecture unit is a quietly effective force to be reckoned with, aiming to increase its civilising influence on new developments throughout Hampshire.  I came to Alton not sure of what I would make of this building. Would it be altogether too modest to attract anyone's attention? I left, though, surprised and enchanted. Here is a building that takes on and develops local traditions, playing intelligently with the timeless forms of tithe barns and grain stores, stables and other rural industrial buildings. A strong and simple building, constructed from local materials, that follows its own logic and adds intelligently to the design of a market town that rightly fears "wow factor" architecture.
Alton's new library has enough traditional touches to make Jane Austen feel at home. By  Jonathan Glancey.