What’s that secret …… beyond that arch? …..

My association with Central Ref stretches back 54 years and across that half century and more I have always pondered on those steps through that archway and just where they led to.

Now, I know it will be an office of sorts, filled with filing cabinets, lockers and the odd table.

But when the hours hung heavy and the promised break through from an old document was not forth coming I would ponder on what Narnia like scene would be revealed behind that wooden door.

To be very accurate this is not the staircase in what was the Archive and Local History Library, that was further on, and for most of my time in the Library I inhabited the vast Social Science Library with its echo and circular message on the power of knowledge.

Of course, I could just ask those I know who worked there.

But wouldn’t that be too easy?*

Location; Central Ref

Pictures; that staircase, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*But I can not stay silent for Helen was moved to offer up "Yes they were both just offices.  The one at the end of the Local Studies dept. I knew well.  I think they are now just storage rooms, as there's not much wiring into them, for computers, and phones".  

So no Narnia surprises then.