Blog

1. 

   Cataloguing the Cass Collection

   Maisie, our placement student, recently completed a project to finish cataloguing of the Cass Collection, which originally arrived at the Library in 2016: Between January and April, I spent 20...

   12th May 2025 • Read more

2. 

   For the private amusement of Chetham’s Library

   Early last year, we celebrated the appointment of Julianne Simpson, as Chetham’s new Librarian, with an exhibition entitled ‘Chetham’s Librarians: Lives and Legacies’. As part of the research for this...

   16th April 2025 • Read more

3. 

   Contingency planning and The wartime library

   On Friday 4 November 1938, the Library Committee of Chetham’s Library assembled – perhaps in the Reading Room – as Chetham’s Librarian prepared to address them. The weather in Manchester...

   13th March 2025 • Read more

4. 

   The Mysteries of the Manchester Alphabet

   Browsing through some of the library’s blogs recently, I came across one from May 2016 which featured a new acquisition of an old book – Roger Oldham’s Manchester Alphabet, published...

   12th December 2024 • Read more

5. 

   No Cure for Love: Two Early Modern Apothecaries and Their Books

   Chetham’s Library has no lack of books with famous former owners: there is a copy of Plato’s works owned by the early modern playwright Ben Jonson (see our post on this...

   26th November 2024 • Read more

6. 

   A total gamechanger – looking back 30 years

     On 19 November 1994 seven jackpot winners received around £800,000 each in the first National Lottery draw. In its first year £267m of lottery money went to “good causes”...

   18th November 2024 • Read more

7. 

   Of Eggs, Shee-Spies and Aphra Behn

   Following on from our last blog, here is an example of spycraft from the 17th century. To put a Schedule, or lytle wryting into an Egge, lay an Egge certaine days...

   12th November 2024 • Read more

8. 

   KEEP IT SECRET, KEEP IT SAFE: WAX SEALS AND LETTER-LOCKING

   As anyone who has visited recently will know, Chetham’s Library played host this summer to a remarkable assembly of furniture: the original marriage bed of Henry VII and Elizabeth of...

   17th October 2024 • Read more

9. 

   A Royal Tudor Bed and a Northern Rogue

   Visitors to Manchester have the rare opportunity to see the original marriage bed made for Henry VII (the first Tudor King) and Elizabeth of York, as well as an infamous...

   17th July 2024 • Read more

10. 

    Harmonia Ruralis or an essay towards a Natural History of British Song Birds

    Birds and bindings More than twenty years ago, in the dark and dusty underground reference stacks of Manchester Central Library, I first came across the two volumes of James Bolton’s...

    12th July 2024 • Read more