Blog

1. 

   The Belle Vue Scenic Railway – our Special Correspondent writes

   Today’s blog post is a guest contribution from Jon Cocks, who not only worked on various of Belle Vue’s attractions, but (luckily for us) took his camera with him. We’re...

   30th July 2018 • Read more

2. 

   Dr Dee at Chetham’s – a view from illustrator Catherine Booth

   We often host classes of one kind of another at the Library, and it’s always intriguing for us as staff to see how people respond to aspects of the collections,...

   29th June 2018 • Read more

3. 

   Hulme Trust Archive: Manchester through the ages

   Thanks to a grant from the Hulme Trust in 2015, we’ve been working on cataloguing and conserving the substantial Hulme Trust Archive held at Chetham’s Library, to make it more...

   22nd June 2018 • Read more

4. 

   Sweated industries: “almost ceaseless toil, hard and unlovely to the last degree”

   ‘… earnings barely sufficient to sustain an existence; hours of labour such as to make the lives of the workers periods of almost ceaseless toil hard and unlovely to the...

   8th June 2018 • Read more

5. 

   Another Manchester Man

     We have recently acquired a copy of the first book printing of The Manchester Man by Isabella Banks, also known as Mrs G. Linnaeus Banks, or simply Mrs Banks....

   27th March 2018 • Read more

6. 

   Lustrings, Peeling and thread sattins, Sarsanets, Persians, Burdets, Camblets, Calimancoes and all other sorts of Stuffs

   Welcome to the age of consumerism! The 18th century has arrived, bringing the birth of the industrial revolution, the spread of global trade and capitalism, empire, and the abhorrent transatlantic...

   22nd March 2018 • Read more

7. 

   Graven images

   This week on BBC Four Andrew Graham Dixon presents the first of a new series ‘Art, Passion and Power: the Story of the Royal Collection’, featuring the portrait drawings and...

   17th January 2018 • Read more

8. 

   A Rare Piece of Irish History

   Among the treasures of the Heywood archive is a single-sheet broadside that would be easy to overlook. Yet the item, entitled The Provisional Government to the People of Ireland, is...

   16th January 2018 • Read more

9. 

   Apples and ale with Christmas tale will make a household merry

   The current season of Christmas songs and carols carries on a centuries old tradition. The first Christmas celebrations may have drawn upon pagan customs, but our earliest reference to Christmas...

   19th December 2017 • Read more

10. 

    Anatomy as art

    During their residency of exploration and study, Brass Art spent time looking at the Library’s collection of works on human anatomy, chiefly William Cowper’s The anatomy of humane bodies (Oxford: 1698)....

    6th December 2017 • Read more