Blog

1. A Dicey moment for Tricky Dicky?

   Among Chetham’s Library’s Halliwell-Phillipps collection lurks another item of anti-Richard III black propaganda. If you’re a committed Ricardian, you may not consider it such an excellent song;  but William Dicey,...

   25th March 2015 • Read more

2. Eclipse fever, 18th century style

    Manchester eclipsed? Panic rising? A dastardly scheme by Liverpool? Surely not! Only partially eclipsed, and this was the view from the Library roof around 9 o’clock: But today’s eclipse put...

   20th March 2015 • Read more

3. Sail away

   These fantastic ink sketches come from a recently purchased volume which celebrates the Manchester Ship Canal. The identity of the artist is unknown, but he or she created 13 meticulous...

   17th March 2015 • Read more

4. Happy Days

   ‘Happy days.’ We heard that phrase many times during the course of Sunday and Monday when our Belle Vue Project Team escaped from the confines of their office into the...

   11th March 2015 • Read more

5. Music and Manuscript

   Whilst Chetham’s Library doesn’t specialise in music, it does have quite large holdings of music. These range from liturgical pieces from the fifteenth-century to late nineteenth-century folk songs and ballads, and includes a wealth of seventeenth and eighteenth-century material, including...

   5th March 2015 • Read more

6. A journal, commenced Dec 1st 1820

   We have just acquired a fascinating addition to our manuscript collection in the form of a 19th-century journal. Begun on 1 December 1820 and concluded in February 1822, the journal...

   5th March 2015 • Read more

7. Marx in red pencil

     The article ‘A German Account of the Newton Review’ appeared in the Volunteer Journal for Lancashire and Cheshire on 14 September 1860. This article would not merit much attention today...

   4th March 2015 • Read more

8. Good bye and good luck, Jess

   We always hate to see our volunteers leave, even when it means they are moving on to bigger and better things. Jess Purdy, the longest-serving volunteer on our Belle Vue...

   3rd March 2015 • Read more

9. Belle Vue comes to Gorton Monastery!

   Sunday 8th and Monday 9th March from 12-4 pm Chetham’s Library is bringing its Belle Vue Collection to beautiful Gorton Monastery for a Belle Vue Festival! We’ll be joining other Belle Vue...

   27th February 2015 • Read more

10. Wallpaper, the Whitworth and William Henry Arnott…

      We recently noticed on a lower shelf in the library, an attractive, if slightly shabby, blue daisy patterned box. The pattern on both the box, and the jacket of...

    26th February 2015 • Read more