In continuous use for more than 350 years, Chetham’s is the oldest public library in the English-speaking world and includes books pre-dating the use of paper.
They were an unlikely pair. One man rode to hounds, wore top hat and tails and came from a wealthy family of cotton manufacturers.The courtyard of Chetham’s Library, home to some 120,000 books and manuscripts.Together, Karl Marx and his benefactor Friedrich Engels studied at an alcove desk, surrounded by windows on three sides, at Chetham’s Library in Manchester, north-west England.
Today’s visitors see the identical space, though it’s the powerful, old-world library aroma that first hits the senses. On his death in 1653, Humphrey Chetham, a man made fabulously wealthy through the textile trade, left a will with three main features. In the words of librarian Fergus Wilde: “He left an idea and cash a mile high.”Sian-Louise Mason, visitor services co-ordinator
Chethams Library is steeped with age and the aroma of the many animal-skin covers on the shelves – everything from lowly pig to goat, buffalo and deerskin. “They never aimed to buy the valuable and unusual. They aimed to buy the useful. For example, they bought a first folio Shakespeare early on, then they realised there was a third folio for sale so they bought the latest. They were not book collectors. If there was a third edition, they assumed it was better, so they bought it.”There are more than 120,000 printed items in the library’s collection, more than half of them published before 1850.
“Even if we wanted to make changes for a modern audience, we are not allowed. We have to go back to the will and follow its instructions,” says Mason.Chetham stipulated the building should remain intact, admission free of charge, its doors open to all , and nothing be asked of a reader.
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