Blog

1. Virtual Belle Vue is Live!

   We are very pleased indeed to announce that our new Virtual Belle Vue website is now live! Thanks to a generous grant by the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund and the...

   4th February 2015 • Read more

2. NEW! Saturday tours of Chetham’s Library

   We’re thrilled to announce that we’ll be opening on certain Saturdays during the spring and summer for a brilliant new tour with Jonathan Schofield. Jonathan will guide you round the...

   2nd February 2015 • Read more

3. The guidebooks of Belle Vue

   We’re delighted to present another post on the history of Belle Vue from Courtney Stickland, a volunteer on the Belle Vue Project from the University of Manchester. This week, she...

   28th January 2015 • Read more

4. In search of a North West Passage

   (The chilly winds and icy January weather suggested the subject for this post.) “…imagine … these mountains of crystal hurled through a narrow strait by a rapid tide; meeting as...

   19th January 2015 • Read more

5. Going down on the wrong end

   This entry from the diaries of John Reed seems appropriate for the cold and snowy weather many of us have been experiencing. Written seventy-four years ago tomorrow, it describes the...

   16th January 2015 • Read more

6. Chetham’s Library in the Manchester Evening News

   Thank you very much to Yakub Qureshi for a lovely article about the Library in the Manchester Evening News yesterday! Do take a look and don’t miss Senior Librarian Fergus...

   15th January 2015 • Read more

7. England in 1835

   We have recently acquired from one of our favourite bookshops, Ken Spelman of York, a first edition of Frederick Von Raumer’s England in 1835: being a Series of Letters Written to...

   14th January 2015 • Read more

8. A plain and familiar method, suitable for the meanest capacity…

     Edward Cocker’s Arithmetick, published in many editions after 1677, was one of the standard text books used to teach mathematics in English schools.     The Library has a copy...

   12th January 2015 • Read more

9. Laureate’s Choice

   The best Christmas present we received this year – sadly it was the only present we got, apart from Ian Beesley’s Spanish sausage (don’t ask) – was an empty bottle...

   9th January 2015 • Read more

10. At the sign of the spectacles

    One of the most striking shop signs in Victorian Manchester was that of the optician T. M. Bowen, whose premises at 27 Market Place were dominated by an enormous pair...

    8th January 2015 • Read more