OK you can come in now....Chorlton gets its first proper municipal Library

Opening the library in 1914

I say first proper municipal library because we had had a few private ones and a temporary one but this building opened in November 1914 was a proper first.

It arrived after the promise made to the people of south Manchester that  in return for voting to join the city in 1904, the Corporation would provide purpose built libraries.*

But they were a little slow in coming.

The library in the 1920s

In the case of Chorlton the first library was opened in 1908 in a rented house on Oswald Road and it would be another six years before a purpose built library was opened on Manchester Road.

It was “furnished with a thousand carefully selected volumes for use in the library and home reading,.............. a good selection of magazines is placed in a separate reading room [and] a special feature of the new library is the provision of a room for meetings of Home Reading Union circles and similar organisations.”

The library in 2012

The Manchester Guardian reported “the style is Classical with Ionic columns in Portland stone and had 7,420 books, [which] if necessary can be increased to 10,500 volumes. There is a general reading room for adults and one for juveniles."

In an age which has seen libraries add computers to the resources available to the user it is perhaps surprising that the Lord Mayor in opening the library nearly 100 years ago.

It was one of those funded by Andrew Carnegie but more of him elsewhere on the blog.

Pictures; the opening from the Manchester Courier, November 5 1914, courtesy of Sally Dervan, the library in the 1920s from the Lloyd collection and the entrance today from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Chorlton's libraries, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorlton%27s%20libraries

A library in your garden ……………

Now, I say in your garden but  over the last few years I have come across these little popup libraries, outside shops, beside car parks, and pretty much anywhere, where lots of people pass.

This one is in Chorlton, and is part of the  Little Free Library.*

And as you do I went looking for more information and as ever Wikipedia had the lot.  “The  Little Free Library is a nonprofit organization that promotes neighborhood book exchanges, usually in the form of a public bookcase. 

More than 90,000 public book exchanges are registered with the organization and branded as Little Free Libraries. 

Through Little Free Libraries, present in 91 countries, millions of books are exchanged each year, with the aim of increasing access to books for readers of all ages and backgrounds. The Little Free Library nonprofit organization is based in Hudson, Wisconsin, United States”.**

There is more, but I have a policy of never representing other people’s research, so you fill have to follow the link to get the full story.

The purists will quibble and say that they are not true libraries, which offer a host of other resources, but that is to mis the point that anything which advances reading and a love of books has a part to play.  After all I am of an age to remember those private libraries which for a small fee lent books.  Ours in New Cross was in a bookshop, but many were part of newsagents. And they were always a supplenet to those eager to read.

Mother went to our public library twice a week and also used the one on Queens Road.

Location; Chorlton

Picture,  the Little Free Library, 2021, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Little Free Library, https://littlefreelibrary.org/

**Little Free Library, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Free_Library, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Free_Library

Miss Clara Atkinson of Groby Road

I wish I had a picture of Miss Clara Atkinson.  

I found her by pure chance and as so often happens I have become interested in her life.

From 1901 and perhaps earlier she was living on Groby Road and was buried in Southern Cemetery on September 3rd 1942.

I came across her in one of the Corporation employment registers detailing those who worked for the library service in the years up to 1914.

Now in the great sweep of history the Corporation employment registers may seem small beer but not so.

The five books contain a list of Council employees, their birth date, year of engagement and their status along with their salary.

So I know that Miss Clara Atkinson was born on May 29 1877, began work as a Library Assistant in the September of 1900 on a weekly wage of ten shillings and that by 1914 she was receiving £1.4 shillings.

Her father was a meat inspector and in the two decades after she was born the family lived on Water Street close to the Abattoir settling in Chorlton sometime around 1901.

By then her father was dead and she shared the house on Groby Road with her mother and four sisters none of whom married and all of who were buried in the family plot between 1939 and 1959.

As yet the story is quite sparse but I have high hopes that more will be revealed.

It may be that there will be someone who remembers the family  and there lurking in an old family album will be a picture of Miss Atkinson and perhaps her sisters.

After all 40 years is quite a long time to live in one place and there might also be more in the Library archive.

She began work at Chorlton Library on Rusholme Road. The Library and the road have long since gone but the road  ran from Ardwick Green to Oxford Street and the library was on the corner where it crossed  Upper Brook Street.

Our first municipal Library was not opened until 1908 and it would be another six years before the present one was opened in the November of 1914.

Of course she may have worked there at some stage after it opened  but at present I just don’t know.

That said we may strike lucky and find something in the archives on one of her sisters who also worked as a librarian.

And the those records are a treasure trove of information including completed application forms, list of those employed in 1912 with their salaries and much more.

So I rather think we have only just started with Miss Clara Atkinson of Groby Road.

I hope so because it will reveal much about the working conditions, expectations and leisure activities of a young woman at the beginning of the 20th century.

Picture; the headstone of the Atkinson sisters in Southern Cemetery, August 2014 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Debates which never go away, ......... the story of our public library

Who could think that a gift of £5,000 in 1914 to help finance a library here in Chorlton could cause a stir and still have people debating the issue years later? Now the gift came from the steel magnate, Andrew Carnegie, and was only one of 660 which he funded in Britain, 1,689 in the United States, 125 in Canada and more elsewhere between 1883 and 1929.

From humble beginnings he had built up a huge steel business before selling out for an estimated $500 million in 1901 and devoting himself to philanthropist projects. Even before he retired he had been spending money on all sorts of projects of which the establishment of public libraries was just one.

But there are those who would argue the money was not his to give away having been made by the men who toiled in the steel plants and who were increasingly denied the right to organise collectively in his work places. But that is another story.

Here in Chorlton the charge against the Carnegie gift was led by Councillor Jane Redford, who “was not infatuated with the Carnegie gift” expressing “a feeling of disappointment that the Chorlton ratepayers were not to get a library through the ordinary means of municipal enterprise.”*

The issue of a free library for Chorlton had been bubbling below the surface since we had voted to be incorporated into the City of Manchester in 1904. In January 1908 the Ratepayers Association had written to the Town Clerk asking for the Corporation to honour the agreement which they did in November of the same year.

It was something of a temporary measure as the library was in a rented house on Oswald Road. But it began with the provision of a thousand books a reading room and a meetings room and was a runaway success. During the first two months the membership climbed to 1,100 and the number of books was doubled with a promise of another 1,000.

More than anything it proved the need for a library on a more permanent footing and by 1911 the negotiations with Carnegie were underway. These gifts from the steel magnate were hedged with conditions, and in our case that the site “should be made over free of cost to the Corporation” ** and the cost of the building shouldn’t exceed £5000.

There is a story that the original plans for the library crossed the Atlantic with the Titanic and were lost, but whether true or not the building was finished just a little later than scheduled and was opened on November 4th 1914. The Manchester Guardian reported “the style is Classical with Ionic columns in Portland stone and had 7,420 books, [which]if necessary can be increased to 10,500 volumes. There is a general reading room for adults and one for juveniles.”


In an age which has seen libraries add computers to the resources available to the user it is perhaps surprising that the Lord Mayor in opening the library nearly 100 years ago “hoped that someday there would be a kinematograph connected to our libraries for the special benefit of boys and girls, enabling them the better to understand the histories they were reading.”***


There was already a cinema of sorts just around the corner on Wilbraham Road, just over the bridge before the junction with Buckingham Road. It had been opened in the early years of the 20th century and would later be part of a chain of picture houses across the city. Alas no such venture was to enter the library.

And now the debate over the future of the library and the question of the degree to which the council should go into partnership with private enterprise is again a live issue. But like the story of the bioscope, and the Chorlton Pavilion on Wilbraham Road it is a topic for another day.

Picture; Chorlton Library from the collection of Andrew Simpson and picture of Mrs Jane Redford from her election address by kind permission of Lawrence Beadle 

* New Library for Chorlton, Manchester Guardian September 28 1911
**ibid Manchester Guardian September 28 1911
*** A New Library, Manchester Guardian November 5th 1914

Opening 1914, the story of our own library by the Edge Theatre Company .......... with four days left to see it

Now there is still time to get to see Opening 1914 by the Edge Theare and Arts Centre.

It is “a part-real, part imagined story of the folk who lived in Chorlton 100 years ago, celebrating the birthday of a long awaited library against the backdrop of a world at war.”*

So using the opening of our library as one of the focal points it explores the lives of three Chorlton people during the first months of the Great War.

It draws on material from the Archives and Local History Library in the Ref as well as contemporary newspapers and musical hall songs and at its centre is Miss Clara Atkinson who lived on Groby Road and worked as a librarian.

And that is all I am going to say about the story because with four days left till it finishes on November 29th I am not going to spoil the plot.

Suffice to say that when go you will not be disappointed by the acting, the script or the songs, all of which made it a memorable evening.

All tickets from: www.edgetheatre.co.uk . 0161 282-9776.

The production is supported by the Arts Council and Manchester City Council and is part of the Chorlton Book Festival


*from the Performance notes

Opening 1914, the story of our own library by the Edge Theatre Company tonight until November 29

Now I first came across Miss Clara Atkinson while doing some research at Central Ref and I was drawn to her story.*

From 1901 and perhaps earlier she was living on Groby Road and was buried in Southern Cemetery on September 3rd 1942.

I came across her in one of the Corporation employment registers detailing those who worked for the library service in the years up to 1914.

So I know that Miss Clara Atkinson was born on May 29 1877, began work as a Library Assistant in the September of 1900 on a weekly wage of ten shillings and that by 1914 she was receiving £1.4 shillings.

She started at Chorlton Library on Rusholme Road. The Library and the road have long since gone but the road ran from Ardwick Green to Oxford Street and the library was on the corner where it crossed  Upper Brook Street.

And in the way of these things she will no doubt have visited our own library which opened in 1914.

I have no idea what she would have made of the changes to libraries in the century that has elapsed but if she were as forward thinking as the Lord Mayor who opened our Library in 1914 she would have been impressed with the computers, the e books and above all the friendly open atmosphere.

The Lord Mayor had expressed a hope that “every library would have a kineograph installed which would make learning more relevant to young people."

Either way I shall be thinking of her when I go to see Opening 1914 at the Library which  is the new production by the Edge Theatre Company and runs from November 19 till 29.

Janine Waters who co wrote the production writes

“Opening 1914 is the new show from the creative team at The Edge (Spinach, Dreaming Under a Different Moon).

A dip back in time, to the Chorlton of a hundred years ago when there was an ice rink on Oswald Road, too many picture houses and a brand new public library just about to open.

Clara, Fred, Lucy and Eddie are just some of the characters who take us on a countdown to the opening of a beloved library and to the start of a war that would change the world forever.”

 Now what I also like is that you have the chance to see the production at either the library or the Edge Theatre.

So those like me who want to sit in the very spot where the story unfolds the Library performances are on Wednesday the 19th  through to Saturday 22nd and then at the Edge Theatre from Tuesday November 25 till Saturday the 29.

Tickets according to Janine will cost “£5 for a special centenary price & site specific performances at Chorlton Library £8/£10 performances at Edge Theatre. All tickets from: www.edgetheatre.co.uk . 0161 282-9776."

The production is supported by the Arts Council and Manchester City Council and is part of the Chorlton Book Festival

*Miss Clara Atkinson of Groby Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/miss-clara-atkinson-of-groby-road.html

Opening 1914 a new production by the Edge Theatre Company from November 19 till 29

You can never have too much history and so I am looking forward to "OPENING 1914" which starts on Wednesday November 19 and runs to Saturday November 29.

Janine Waters who co wrote the production writes

“Opening 1914 is the new show from the creative team at The Edge (Spinach, Dreaming Under a Different Moon). 

A dip back in time, to the Chorlton of a hundred years ago when there was an ice rink on Oswald Road, too many picture houses and a brand new public library just about to open. 

Clara, Fred, Lucy and Eddie are just some of the characters who take us on a countdown to the opening of a beloved library and to the start of a war that would change the world forever.”

 Now what I also like is that you have the chance to see the production at either the library or the Edge Theatre.

So those like me who want to sit in the very spot where the story unfolds the Library performances are on Wednesday the 19th  through to Saturday 22nd and then at the Edge Theatre from Tuesday November 25 till Saturday the 29.

But that does make for a dilemma because the Edge is based in the old Methodist Sunday School which during the Great War was a Red Cross Hospital and the romantic in me wonders about more ghosts looking down on us.

And given that it will be a popular event I will have to decide soon.

Tickets according to Janine will cost “£5 for a special centenary price & site specific performances at Chorlton Library £8/£10 performances at Edge Theatre. All tickets from: www.edgetheatre.co.uk . 0161 282-9776."

The production is supported by the Arts Council and Manchester City Council and is part of the Chorlton Book Festival

One hundred years of a public library in Chorlton and an exciting new project from Edge Theatre & Arts Centre

Now we are entering one of those long sustained periods of reflection on past events.

The Library in 2012

It began earlier in the month with the centenary of the outbreak of the Great War and will rumble on with coverage of the first big battles of that conflict and conclude with stories of the first war time Christmas of 1914.

And amongst all of that will be the 100th anniversary of the opening of our Library.

It is a story I keep coming back to, not only because it says much about how Chorlton was changing in the last decades of the 19th century but also because it was opened just two months after the Great War began.*

From the 1880s into the 1920s our township grew a pace with an influx of new residents taking advantage of the housing boom which pretty much obliterated the countryside around what we now know as the Four Banks and off along Wilbraham Road and the long roads by Oswald.

In the course of that development the old name for the area was lost and so what had once been Martlege became “New Chorlton.”

I doubt that many who moved in even gave a second thought to that older Chorlton instead they looked to stamping their own identity on the area.

They set up sporting and cultural clubs and societies and above all wanted the Corporation to honour its promise of a public library made when we voted to join the city in 19104.

Back in 1914

This came about in November 1914 and so it is fitting that the Edge Theatre & Arts Centre are embarking on an exciting new project, which is being funded by the Arts Council of England and want as many people from the local community as possible, to get involved.

Janine Waters who will be directly involved in the project is keen that

“Opening 1914 will be a new piece of musical theatre; participatory workshops and accompanying exhibitions to celebrate the lives of ordinary people opening a long awaited for library, against the backdrop of a world just three months into the Great War.

We would love to hear from anyone who has any stories, photos, letters, anecdotes or imaginings about the library in its early days. It opened in the November which coincides with the annual Chorlton Book Festival and this project will be a highlight of the birthday celebrations.

Are you the great grandchild of Chorlton's first librarian?

Do you have an invitation in your attic from the Lord Mayor to the opening?

Do you remember stories from the streets surrounding the library in 1914?

The Library in the 1920s

Do you have anything to share about the people who lived and worked in Chorlton during WW1?

We also want to use this opportunity to explore the war memorial in the grounds of The Edge and any others in Chorlton. 

We would love to hear from anyone who has a connection to this too”

Now I am quite excited about the project especially as it might give us an insight into how people got on with their lives when they weren’t thinking of the war or worrying about loved ones who had gone off to fight.

You can contact Janine  janine@edgetheatre.co.uk or  0161 282 9776

Pictures; the Library today from the collection of Andrew Simpson, the opening courtesy of Sally Dervan and the Library in the early 1920s from the Lloyd Collection

*Chorlton’s Libraries, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorlton%27s%20libraries

**The Edge Theatre and Arts Centre, http://www.edgetheatre.co.uk/index.php/contact-us/

The Libraries of south Manchester, “built in fulfilment of a promise made in 1904.” ...part 1 Chorlton

The libraries of south Manchester come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and date from the decades after 1904

This was the year when Burnage, Chorlton, Withington and Didsbury voted to join the city.  In return for voting to become part of Manchester there was the promise of cheaper gas, electricity and water rates, and the provision of public libraries.

These were a little slow in coming.  In the case of Chorlton the first library was opened in 1908 in a rented house on Oswald Road and it would be another six years before a purpose built library was opened on Manchester Road.  It was “furnished with a thousand carefully selected volumes for use in the library and home reading,.............. a good selection of magazines is placed in a separate reading room [and] a special feature of the new library is the provision of a room for meetings of Home Reading Union circles and similar organisations.”

The Manchester Guardian reported “the style is Classical with Ionic columns in Portland stone and had 7,420 books, [which] if necessary can be increased to 10,500 volumes. There is a general reading room for adults and one for juveniles.”

In an age which has seen libraries add computers to the resources available to the user it is perhaps surprising that the Lord Mayor in opening the library nearly 100 years ago “hoped that someday there would be a kinematograph connected to our libraries for the special benefit of boys and girls, enabling them the better to understand the histories they were reading.”

The exhibition with its mix pf Peter Topping's wonderful paintings and my stories of the libraries has just finished at Chorlton but  will soon be traveling across the south of the city to Burnage, Didsbury, Fallowfield and Withington.

Picture; from the Lloyd collection

*The Lord Mayor of Manchester 1927

"Built in fulfilment of a promise made in 1904" a celebration of the libraries of south Manchester

It’s another of our exhibitions and tells the story of the libraries of south Manchester.    http://www.gladtobe.in/south/

From the promise made to the people of south Manchester in return for voting to join the city in 1904, to the our three Carnegie Libraries, and along the way some wonderful little stories.  All of this with Peter’s paintings of each library as they look today. Or read the book at

The libraries of south Manchester come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and date from the decades after 1904

This was the year when Burnage, Chorlton, Withington and Didsbury voted to join the city.  In return for voting to become part of Manchester there was the promise of cheaper gas, electricity and water rates, and the provision of public libraries.

But the libraries  were a little slow in coming.  In the case of Chorlton the first library was opened in 1908 in a rented house on Oswald Road and it would be another six years before a purpose built library was opened on Manchester Road.

It was “furnished with a thousand carefully selected volumes for use in the library and home reading,.............. a good selection of magazines is placed in a separate reading room [and] a special feature of the new library is the provision of a room for meetings of Home Reading Union circles and similar organisations.”

The Manchester Guardian reported “the style is Classical with Ionic columns in Portland stone and had 7,420 books, [which] if necessary can be increased to 10,500 volumes. There is a general reading room for adults and one for juveniles.”

In an age which has seen libraries add computers to the resources available to the user it is perhaps surprising that the Lord Mayor in opening the library nearly 100 years ago “hoped that someday there would be a kinematograph connected to our libraries for the special benefit of boys and girls, enabling them the better to understand the histories they were reading.”

The exhibition will be in Chorlton Library till the end of the month and then we plan to roll it out across the south of the city with a final showing in Central Library on Deansgate.

Picture; art work and picture from the current exhibition in Chorlton Library from the collection of Peter Topping

Penny Readings, a Reading Room, and two libraries, ....... tales to support a new painting by Peter

In the age of the internet who would want to go to a library? For a start you have to go there, and mix with a lot of strangers who are always in front of you and seldom are in a hurry to get their book stamped. And you can bet there will be children laughing out loud as they read in the corner supposed to be the quiet room.

They are says one of my friends “a hangover from another age. Surely all that you could possibly want from pasta dishes to the date of the fall of Rome can be found somewhere on the net?”


Of course we all know that libraries have changed a lot. Our library can boast a range of computers with access to the world, an automatic book check out and a neat collection of DVDs. It is even possible to look up and reserve a book on line and have it delivered to the library.

Libraries have and still are a vital part of any community. In another age when books were not cheap and newspapers not so easily available the library and before it the “reading room” provided the only means by which many could further their knowledge or just read for pleasure.

Nor must we forget that for the generations born before the introduction of the 1870 Education Act, full time schooling was hit and miss and in agricultural communities school attendance vied with the needs of harvest time and plant sowing.

So the introduction of Penny Readings in 1867 in the village proved a great attraction and were supported by our own brass band and Vocal Society. The brass band I have already mentioned in the earlier post http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2011/11/1893-brass-band-lives-revealed.html


In 1874 a reading room was opened on Beech Road in a rented house and despite a shaky start by 1879 had “700 volumes of well selected books principally of an educational character, but comprising all the best works of the standard novelists.”* Later the library settled in Rowe House which was on the corner of Acres and Beech Road.

But these were essentially voluntary aided and depended on local fund raising. So in 1879 £120 was collected towards equipping the reading room with new books. And this tend towards self help had been here from the early 19th century when both the Methodists and the parish church raised subscriptions for building the Wesleyan chapels and Sunday School on Chorlton Row** and rebuilding the National school on the green and Rectory on Edge Lane.

Not till 1908 did we get our first municipal library which was opened in a rented house on Oswald Road and was part of the agreement by which Chorlton and other townships voted for incorporation into the city. It was “furnished with a thousand carefully selected volumes for use in the library and home reading,.............. a good selection of magazines is placed in a separate reading room [and] a special feature of the new library is the provision of a room for meetings of Home Reading Union circles and similar organisations.” ***
Which brings me to our library on Manchester Road and another of Peter’s painting’s which are on display at a number of places across Chorlton and can also be seen on his facebook site https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures


I think he has captured perfectly the building and its customers on a busy library day. It opened in November 1914 with 7,420 books with capacity for another 3,000. On top of this there was a general reading room for adults and another for young people.

There had however been some opposition because it was in part funded by the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie who provided £5,000 towards its building.

Now the whole story of Carnegie libraries Is enough for another post as is the debate on the future of present site in the light of Council plans for redeveloping the leisure facilities of Chorlton.

Picture; ©Peter Topping 2011 www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

*Thomas Ellwood, 1886
**Chorlton Row is now Beech Road
***Manchester Guardian November 23 1908