Lost and Found in the Library

20th March 2026

In the early years of the nineteenth century, Chetham’s Librarian John Taylor Allen (1812–21) made a remarkable discovery in his apartment at the library: a treasure trove of the private papers of Humphrey Chetham, stuffed up the chimney! Until that date the library’s founder had been an enigmatic figure, with much more known about his death and legacy than his life, but the papers that Allen discovered provided invaluable information about his landed and commercial interests and his time as treasurer of the County Palatine of Lancashire and collector of subsidies during the English Civil War. Incredibly, these papers were almost lost for a second time during the nineteenth century, since, while most of them were bound into books for their protection, a smaller number remained in Allen’s possession. These loose papers later came into the hands of the local antiquarian James Crossley, who was honorary librarian between 1875 and 1883, and only returned to Chetham’s Library in 1885, when the library was obliged to purchase them from the sale of Crossley’s library. Today, they are rightly considered one of the library’s treasures.

This remarkable story is only one of many, and Chetham’s Library’s latest exhibition focuses on the various instances of loss and discovery in the library over the years. Despite the efforts of librarians and library staff, books have sometimes been mislaid and even stolen, while one governor of the hospital school chased away the would-be thieves of the English Civil War weaponry mounted above the fireplace in the Baronial Hall while brandishing a sword—but not before they’d made off with some of those weapons. At other times, unexpected items have been discovered in the unlikeliest of places: during conservation work in the 1980s, a fragment of medieval sculpture was discovered on top of one of the book presses in the library, while a mummified cat was discovered in a portion of the building’s roof. The stories of these objects shine a light on the library’s history and the people who have interacted with it over the last four centuries and beyond, and over the coming months, we look forward to sharing them with you.

Figure 1: A letter to him from the Thomas Fairfax to Humphrey Chetham concerning the supply of gunpowder (Chetham’s Library, Humphrey Chetham’s private papers, volume 2, p. 17).