Dark oak bookshelves, subdued lighting, gently creaking floors and that unmistakable odour of aging paper, leather and bookbinding glue. Chetham’s Library – amongst Manchester’s Fab 4 libraries – thrilled me from head to toe.
I dawdled behind the tour group, lingering as long as possible to breathe in that musty, somewhat nutty odour – ahhh, better than roses or gingerbread.
With just 24 hours in Manchester (after following the more famous Fab 4 in Liverpool), we chose carefully from a long list of intriguing places to visit: Roman fort ruins, boat tours on the old industrial canals, a train viaduct turned into a park, National Football Museum, and football stadiums. The Pankhurst Museum (which profiles the famous suffragette family) was disappointingly open only two days a week – days when we weren´t there. Heavy rain – inevitable in November – also helped to shorten our list considerably.
Bookstores and old libraries excite me, possibly even more than museums, so Manchester’s four famous libraries easily won out: Chetham’s Library, Manchester Central Library, The John Rylands Library, and Portico Library.
Chetham’s Library
Chetham´s Library, built in beautiful pinkish sandstone in the style of a fortified manor house, sits at the confluence of two rivers (the Irwell and the Irk) – a good defensive spot in medieval Manchester.
We began at Chetham´s Library with a guided visit (the only way to see it). Continuously operating since 1653, it´s the oldest free public library in the English-speaking world. (And it’s pronounced “CHEET-ams.”)
Trailing behind our tour guides, Liz and Patrick, we entered under a stone archway into a courtyard that had been the centre of medieval Manchester in the 1400s, explained Liz. The complex of buildings that includes the library was built in 1421 as a college for priests, serving Manchester Cathedral next door. Roman constructions lie beneath the carpark.
Ducking out of the rain, we entered the well-preserved cloister, which had had stone floors and glass windows added in the 1650s. Patrick pointed out an old cat flap in a door – used back when felines had kept mice and rats at bay when rush matting had covered a dirt floor.
We examined the inglenook (left) in the Baronial Hall, wavy old glass in the cloister, and the devil’s hoofmark in the Warden’s Room before entering the library proper.
The complex had also sheltered a bakery, brewery, stables, servants’ quarters, guest rooms, day rooms for the priests and bedrooms upstairs. Liz guided us through two splendid rooms before we saw the library.
The Warden´s Room – large, square, panelled, with a timber ceiling featuring carved images such as a sinner in the Mouth of Hell – was essentially an office for the college’s manager. One famous warden was Dr. John Dee, who had been sent by Queen Elizabeth I to spy on people around Europe. Appointed warden in 1595, Dee was into astrology and the occult. Apparently, the devil appeared and chased him, leaving a hoofmark on a table. Liz showed us the infamous black burn mark.
“Either that or someone spilled a candle,” she said.
The library door opened to reveal the gloriously musty treasures within.
The Baronial Hall, used as a dining room up to the 1960s, featured an enormous inglenook – essentially a fireplace within a fireplace. I’d read in novels about inglenooks but had never encountered a real one before. I’m sure they’re probably smokier in reality than in my romantic daydreams.
Armory from the Civil War (1630 Catholics vs Protestants) hung on the walls. Liz pointed out a bullet hole in the wall. During the war, the college had stored gunpowder, prisoners and pigs.
Humphrey Chetham, a linen and cotton merchant, banker and landowner, sounded like an intriguing fellow. When he died in 1653, at age 72 with no wife or children, his will left money to establish a home and school for 40 underprivileged boys and set up the library. Those charged with establishing both bought the college and renovations began.
The will stipulated that the librarian “require nothing of any man that cometh into the library,” i.e. a free, no-pay library – quite uncommon then.
Soaring Tudor ceilings lightened the dark wood bookcases filled with leather-bound books.
Finally! We climbed stairs to the library, where the smell of aging leather and paper wrapped around us.
The library is in the wing where priests used to have their beds and it´s on an upper level so it’s less damp. Books were expensive so they were initially chained to the shelves. Liz pointed out stools with inset S-shaped carved handles that were used by readers to sit close to the shelf to read the chained books.
When more book space was needed, the shelves were built higher. Then, the chains weren’t practical, so each alcove was gated. Liz said the librarian would lock readers in, so they couldn’t make off with any books.
Locked gates protected the many alcoves lined with bookshelves. Gold-painted letters on the ends of each bookcase showed the alphabetical filing system.
The library now has about 120,000 books: half published before 1850; 20 percent in the area we saw; 80 percent elsewhere, some under high security because of their value.
Library holdings are impressive:
- Flores Historiarum, from the 1200s, is the oldest book
- 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle, a biblical encyclopedia
- 11-volume set of St. Augustine´s works, amongst the first books acquired
- Bibles from the 1400s and 1600s
- Dialogues of Plato, that had been owned and annotated by playwright Ben Jonson
- A first edition of Sir Isaac Newton’s book Principia, published in 1687, in which he explains his theory of gravity
- Dr. Samuel Johnson´s ground-breaking dictionary
- Books owned by Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, John Dee, Ben Jonson
- Works by Aristotle, Euclid, Galileo, Copernicus, and Hippocrates
New acquisitions now focus on books about northwest England.
Although Chetham’s Library felt like a museum, people can still make appointments to consult the books.
“It’s still functioning as a library,” said Liz. Today, the now-unchained books may be taken to the Reading Room for study. And that’s where we went next.
An enormous wall of symbolic carvings and a portrait of Humphrey Chetham dominated the Reading Room.
“We do have ghosts,” Liz warned as we entered the Tudor-décor Reading Room. “Don’t be alarmed.”
Elaborate wood carvings along one wall fanned up and out to the high, timbered ceiling. Liz explained the various symbols. In Chetham’s coat of arms, the helmet visor is down, meaning he’s a gentleman but not a knight. (Indeed, he declined the offer of a knighthood in 1631 and had to pay a fine.) Obelisks rest on stacked books, representing learning. A rooster represents vigilance. A pelican feeding its chicks represent Christ’s sacrifice.
A portrait of Humphrey Chetham hung above the fireplace. I stepped closer to examine our man of the hour: a dour face with a Van Dyck pointy beard, a ruffled collar and a close-fitting embroidered cap, which is still in the library’s collection. The glove in his hand signified that he’s a gentleman. He looked severe, but must have had a generous heart, given his legacy.
The Gorton Chest, containing 51 chained books, had operated like a medieval bookmobile.
In the corner sat the Gorton Chest – like a medieval bookmobile. Chetham’s will had also provided funds to build five of these large wooden chests, with the dimensions of a deep coffin. Placed in five parish churches in and around Manchester, each contained chained books that sat on the shelves with spines in and pages out so the chains wouldn’t rub against the bindings. A shelf had sat in front to rest the books on when used by ordinary people.
“For most people, it would have been the first time they’d seen a book,” said Liz. The Gorton Chest, from the Parish Church of St. James Gorton, contained 51 books in English, instead of the usual Latin and Greek.
I sat in the windowed alcove (centre) where Marx and Engels studied together. Humphrey Chetham looked dour but must have had a generous heart.
Over the centuries, librarians had listed everyone who visited, including Benjamin Franklin, Charles Dickens, Daniel Defoe, John Dalton, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Liz showed us the alcove where Marx and Engels had studied together in 1845.
“They spent several months sitting in this alcove,” she said. From the window, they would have observed factories and the appalling living conditions of the working poor. “It was an incubation chamber for their ideas.”
I sat at their table, in their alcove, and flipped through some of the books on the table – copies of books that they had consulted! It was daunting to think about.
Chetham’s Library has been in continuous use since 1653.
While the group was still in the Reading Room, I snuck back to the library and wandered up and down beside the bookshelves and gated alcoves, breathing in that old-book smell again.
I inspected titles and looked for dates on the leather spines. The oldest I saw was 1583. To wrap my mind around that, I put it in personal perspective – 400 years before I began working as a journalist.
Manchester Central Library
The Manchester Central Library on a rainy November afternoon was lit up like a Christmas tree.
Perhaps my love of libraries stemmed from my first job. At age 15, I shelved books at the Newmarket Public Library, becoming intimate with the Dewey Decimal system. Sometimes, when the head librarian took a break, I got to sit at the main desk, date-stamp books and write the borrowers’ numbers down. A thrill!
I reminisced as we threaded our way from Chetham’s, through rainy Christmas markets, to the Manchester Central Library. Said to have been inspired by Rome’s Pantheon, this building opened in 1934, but the city’s library history goes back to 1852, when the Manchester Free Library opened. (Before the Free Libraries Act of 1850, people had to pay an annual subscription fee to use a library.)
Donations to build the library had come from all levels of society, from Prince Albert down to working men. The conclusion had been that even poor people wanted knowledge (!). Charles Dickens and William Thackeray attended the opening. Free public libraries were popular right from the start.
An impressive domed ceiling covers the Reading Room and ornate clock, while columns march around the perimeter.
We entered and climbed stairs to the impressive Reading Room. We stood in awe. At the central circular shiny wood desk, four green malachite pillars supported a golden clock tower, leading our eyes upward to the domed ceiling. If it hadn’t been dark outside, the glass oculus in the dome’s centre would have provided natural light.
Running around the dome was a strip of writing (hard to see in the photos) – a quotation from the Bible (Proverbs 4, verses 7 to 9): “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting, get understanding.” Fantastic advice, no matter what your spiritual bent.
Canadian author Margaret Atwood was part of an exhibit celebrating Manchester Literature Festival’s 20th anniversary.
Quiet readers sat at long desks that fanned out towards bookshelves around the edges, guarded by tall columns.
“Everyone is on a laptop or phone,” Bill whispered. He was right. As we circled the room, I kept an eye out for people using pens, pencils or paper for notetaking. I saw just two or three.
My eyes swept along the bookshelves to see what was what. Feminist review. Lots of legal texts.
Then I happened upon a surprise! Margaret Atwood, a famous Canadian author, stared out at us from a display-board on an easel, alongside other well-known British and international authors. Called From Page to Stage, the photographic exhibit celebrated Manchester Literature Festival’s 20th anniversary and “some of the world’s greatest authors” who’ve taken part in the festival over the years.
Manchester is a UNESCO City of Literature, one of 53 cities around the world that are stars in areas such as publishing, bookstores and libraries, producing authors or hosting related festivals.
The spectacular Manchester Central Library entrance lobby featured Shakespeare in a stained-glass window and an elaborate ceiling with shields and other symbols.
From an upper floor, we looked down from a balcony into the library’s main entrance hall. An intricate stained-glass window featured William Shakespeare and scenes from his plays – hard to see since night had already fallen on that late November afternoon.
Above, a grand ceiling displayed the arms and crests of surrounding cities and councils, while the walls showed off the crests of saints and local institutions, including Chetham’s.
My favourite feature was the white marble statue called The Reading Girl. We found her on a stairwell landing. She was even lovelier in person than in the photos I’d seen. I gazed from all sides, admiring her graceful limbs and intent concentration on her book of poetry.
The Reading Girl was carved in Italy and purchased by an English shipping company owner. The tale goes that a poem called The Angel’s Story had been printed on paper and pasted into her marble book, but the poem had disappeared by the time the owner’s family donated her to the library in 1938. Staff have never been able to trace that poem.
The lovely Reading Girl statue deserves a better location than the stairwell but, then again, it´s easy for people to find her. We saw the Ray Bradbury quote on hoardings around a building site in Sheffield.
We ventured further downstairs to the basement level, where doors led into the library stacks that are purported to contain 35 kilometres of shelves.
We also saw a plaque and memorial to Mancunians (that’s what people from Manchester are called) who fought against fascism in the Spanish Civil War. A temporary exhibit showed books about women who contributed to the Second World War effort, at home, as medical professionals and as spies.
Manchester libraries were the first in England to employ women. They apparently did good work, especially in the boys’ room where they were always put in charge.
“It is believed they exert a salutary influence over their young readers,” wrote Councillor Harry Rawson in an 1893 report. High praise indeed.
The John Rylands Library
Enriqueta Rylands (left) founded The John Rylands Library in memory of her husband.
A woman, however, had most definitely been in charge of the next library we saw.
Enriqueta Rylands spent about £1 million (worth $1.8 million Canadian then; $185 million today) to found The John Rylands Library in memory of her husband in 1888. The library finally opened on Jan. 1, 1900, in a splendid stone building with neo-Gothic vaulted corridors, stained glass, and dark wood bookcases.
The library now acknowledges that John Rylands, Britain’s leading cotton merchant, “profited from slavery through the transatlantic cotton trade.” When he died in 1888, Enriqueta became one of England’s wealthiest women.
Neo-Gothic vaulted corridors and windows reminded me of Hogwarts, the Harry Potter castle-school.
“Enslaved cotton pickers and Lancashire factory workers created the wealth Enriqueta Rylands inherited,” an info panel said. “Rylands used this wealth to establish a library for the people of Manchester. She wanted it to be a catalyst for the cultural, social and religious advancement of the city.”
Our visit was a flying one, since we’d spent a few hours at the People’s History Museum and had to rush to catch a train to the airport. But we saw that there was room after room with works of art and exhibits about books. Even the architecture merited admiration.
Rylands exhibits included a prayer on papyrus (left), a woodblock-printed book (centre) that may be the oldest printed European book, and a woodblock similar to that used for the book.
We saw an indulgence – a type of document sold by the Catholic Church to forgive people’s sins – printed by Johann Gutenberg on his press in 1454-55 using his handy-dandy new movable-metal type printing press. The library also has a Gutenberg Bible and important collections of medieval texts.
A rather colourful book may possibly be the oldest printed European book. Printed in the Netherlands and dated from about 1452, it was printed using wooden blocks, with each line and letter carved into the woodblock first. Only a few blockbooks survive. Beside it was a woodblock from the 17th century, similar to the one used to print the blockbook.
The library has 1,000+ clay tablets written in the earliest known writing system – cuneiform – plus various scraps of ancient prayers, petitions and hymns, written on papyri. There are even pieces of the earliest surviving Biblical manuscripts.
The Rylands library is now part of Manchester University.
We sped through the corridors, dipping into a few rooms to see the exhibits, scan bookshelves, and breathe in that old book scent again.
Fun fact: if you take a deep dive down the Internet rabbit hole of “old book smell,” you´ll find that it’s most closely related to books printed after 1850 on paper made from trees, which readily degrades. Before that, paper made from rags of cotton or linen did not break down and release their odours as easily.
Portico Library
We couldn’t visit the Portico Library, but here are some old books – with their enticing old-book smell! – from Chetham’s.
Full disclosure: we unfortunately didn´t include enough time for the Portico Library but I mention it because it deserves a visit.
The Portico is a subscription library, established by 400 wealthy people (all men) who ponied up the subscriber fee in 1806 to become members. The founding secretary was Peter Mark Roget, who wrote the first English thesaurus. Women couldn’t belong until the 1870 Married Women’s Property Act was passed.
Like the Rylands, the Portico expanded during Victorian times with wealth built on the backs of the poor and enslaved, through the Industrial Revolution, British empire-building, and colonial expansion.
“This 19th century collection was assembled following a racist, sexist and ableist system of cultural hierarchies and some of the books reflect the prejudices of the historical era,” the website said in describing its collection of 25,000 books.
“We have a smaller collection of modern and contemporary books which enhance the core collection by offering alternative perspectives and reflect changing attitudes and interests. We are working to address the harmful legacies in our collections.”
I appreciate it when institutions like the Portico and the Rylands at least acknowledge their sordid pasts. Next step: actively do something to right the wrongs.
Our room at the Heathcote Hotel Manchester just happened to have library wallpaper. Perfect!
When we told people we were visiting Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield, we got a lot of raised eyebrows and the question “Why?” Even from friends who are from Manchester and Liverpool!
But we discovered that our week spent in those cities was not nearly enough. Our speedy exploration of Manchester’s Fab 4 libraries proved that.
We visited Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield in England in November 2025. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.
Maybe the next time you stay here again, our new library will be open. Hahahaha!
Excellent! We look forward to it!
Seeing those poor chained books, I feel the library staff had it all wrong: each library user should have been forced to have a ball and chain attached to an ankle so they couldn’t leave with any books without first signing them out! 😉 That would have been much easier. Although locking users into a section has its appeal, as well. But that might have “Irk’d” some of them! The next time you and Bill are out that way, may I suggest a visit to The Royal Armouries in Leeds? It is only an hour away from Manchester, is one of the oldest museums in the world, and holds one of the largest collections of arms and armour in the world. My son Martin and I have our eyes set on visiting it one day. Thanks, Kathryn, for yet another fabulous and interesting installment. Do keep ’em coming!
That sounds like a retired librarian talking, Emmett! Did you dream about chaining the library users?!!
Thanks for the Leeds suggestion. There is so much to see and do in that part of England.
WOW, Kathryn – what a tour! Your plan-ahead and see-it-while-there abilities are always amazing.
Your entertainment and educational tours through the decades continue to keep me looking for more.
Keep up your offerings whilst Kanata continues to miss you.
P.S.
Aww, Moe! I miss your cheery smiles!