Blog

  1. Oldham Coat of Arms

    Recently we were cleaning the gallery space in the Library and came across a painting of a heraldic achievement, generally knowns as a coat of arms. It bears the date...

    8th September 2023 Read more
  2. Image credit: Matilda Betham, unknown artist, image taken from Wikimedia Comms.

    Matilda Betham: An (un)Celebrated Woman

    Above: Matilda Betham, unknown artist, image taken from Wikimedia Comms. Mary Matilda Betham (known as Matilda to her friends and family) was a diarist, poet and author in the last...

    2nd August 2023 Read more
  3. An English Renaissance Feminist: Cancelled

    Above: Portrait by Lady Mary Wroth, by John de Critz 1620. Just before International Women’s Day 2023, there emerged from the shelves of Chetham’s Radcliffe collection a rare copy of...

    22nd June 2023 Read more
  4. Lucy Hutchinson and the Civil War

    Given our recent theme focusing on women in the library, the time seems right to tell, if only in brief, some of the remarkable stories of their lives and achievements....

    10th May 2023 Read more
  5. Note, Gentle Reader

    Thomas Gudlawe’s annotations in the Nuremberg Chronicle The Chetham’s Library copy of the Liber Chronicarum (“The Book of Chronicles”, more commonly known as the Nuremberg Chronicle and previously featured in...

    17th March 2023 Read more
  6. William Hogarth talk

    Public talk on the art of William Hogarth, 8 March 2023 William Hogarth’s paintings and prints are for many the very image of eighteenth-century England. His ‘Gin Lane’ and the...

    2nd February 2023 Read more
  7. A Weaving of Words

    Inspiration from the early textile industry Chetham’s Library owes its very existence to the popularity of fustian, a coarse cloth of which the warp was linen and the weft was...

    19th December 2022 Read more