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  1. The Mummified Cat in the Library Roof

    18th May 2026 • Read more

  2. Thomas de la Warre’s Trans-Atlantic Manuscript

    10th May 2026 • Read more

  3. Births, Deaths, Marriages and Chickens: Strange Finds in the Margins

    10th April 2026 • Read more

  4. Lost and Found in the Library

    20th March 2026 • Read more

Tag Archive: Chetham’s Library

  1. A row of single beds covered with blankets stand with their heads against a medieval stone wall. Through a ‘Tudor’ arch, another room containing more beds and a medieval arched window is visible. Above, a medieval timbered roof is visible.

    The Mummified Cat in the Library Roof

    Readers are advised that this post contains a photograph of a mummified cat and rat which they may find distressing. Over the years, the medieval buildings that now house Chetham’s...

    18th May 2026 • Read more
  3. The title page of John Dee’s copy of Agostino Nifo’s Euthici Augustini. The title is printed in a gothic type in lines of decreasing length to form an inverted triangle shape, with a cross at the bottom. Above the title, the words ‘Joannes Dee 1557. 4. Maii. Londini’ have been written in a calligraphic hand in ink.

    The Afterlives of John Dee’s Books

    By the 1570s, John Dee had established at his home of Mortlake what has been described as the largest and most diverse library in Elizabethan England, containing—according to Dee—three thousand...

    28th February 2026 • Read more

  4. Contingency Planning and the Wartime Library

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

    13th March 2025 • Read more