The Oldest Free Library
Chetham's Library has been open, free of charge, to anyone who wants to use it since 1653. It is the oldest public library in the English-speaking world. Not the oldest building that once contained a library. Not the oldest collection that was later moved somewhere else. The oldest library that has been in continuous operation, in the same building, open to the public, for over 370 years.
It sits on Long Millgate, next to Manchester Cathedral and Victoria Station, in a complex of medieval sandstone buildings that look like they belong in a film set rather than the middle of a modern city. Most people who pass through Victoria Station every day have no idea it is there. It is tucked behind the cathedral, down a cobbled path, through a gatehouse, and into a courtyard that feels like it has been untouched for centuries. Because, in many ways, it has.
Humphrey Chetham
Humphrey Chetham was born in 1580 in Crumpsall, on the northern edge of Manchester. He became a wealthy textile merchant and banker, one of the richest men in Lancashire. He never married and had no children. He wrote his will in December 1651, directing that his fortune be used to establish a free public library and a school for the education of poor boys. He died on 20 September 1653.
The buildings he chose for his bequest were already old. They had been built in 1421 as a residence for the priests of Manchester's collegiate church, the building that is now Manchester Cathedral. The complex included a great hall, a cloistered courtyard, and a series of rooms that would be converted into the library. Chetham's executors established the library according to his instructions, and his executors bought the buildings in 1654, and the library opened to readers in 1655 under its first librarian, Richard Johnson.
His will specified that the library should be free to all. "The books shall be for the use of scholars and others well affected, to resort unto," he wrote. Three hundred and seventy years later, it still is. Researchers can use the reading room by appointment, and visitors can explore the medieval rooms and library on guided tours, which should be booked in advance. There is no membership fee. The principle remains the same: this is a place of learning, open to all.
The Reading Room
The library itself is extraordinary. The reading room is panelled in dark oak, with the original press bookcases installed in the 1650s still in use. The books were originally chained to the presses in the medieval manner, though the chains were removed in the mid-18th century. The oak presses and their distinctive gates remain intact. The collection contains over 100,000 printed volumes, including around 60,000 published before 1851, plus over 1,000 manuscript volumes, including books printed by William Caxton, medieval manuscripts, and early maps of Manchester and Lancashire.
The room has barely changed in three and a half centuries. The light comes through leaded windows. The oak desks are worn smooth by generations of readers. The smell is of old wood and old paper, the unmistakable scent of a place where knowledge has been accumulating since the English Civil War. It is one of the most atmospheric rooms in England, and it is free to visit.
There is a bay window at the far end of the reading room with a desk and two chairs. It is, by some margin, the most historically significant window seat in Manchester, and possibly in the world.
"Two men sat at a desk in a bay window in Manchester and wrote the ideas that reshaped the modern world."
Marx and Engels
In the summer of 1845, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels sat together at the reading desk in the bay window of Chetham's Library. Engels was already living in Manchester, working at his father's cotton mill, Ermen & Engels, in Weaste, Salford. He had been studying the conditions of the working poor in the city's slums and factories, research that would become The Condition of the Working Class in England, published that same year.
Marx came to Manchester to work with Engels. They used Chetham's Library because it was free, it was warm, and it had the books they needed. They sat at the alcove desk in the bay window and read political economy, philosophy, and history. They made notes. They argued. They developed the theoretical framework that would become The Communist Manifesto, published three years later in 1848.
The desk is still there. The bay window is still there. You can stand in the exact spot where two men sat and formulated ideas that would reshape the politics of the 20th century. Whether you agree with those ideas or not, the fact that they were partly developed in a free public library in Manchester, founded by a textile merchant who wanted poor boys to have access to books, is one of the great ironies of history.
Still Free, Still Open
Chetham's Library is also home to Chetham's School of Music, one of the most prestigious specialist music schools in the country. The school was founded under the same bequest as the library, originally as a school for poor boys, and has been educating children on this site since the 1650s. It became a co-educational specialist music school in 1969 and now attracts students from across the world.
The medieval buildings house both institutions side by side. You can visit the library and hear students practising in the rooms nearby: cellos, pianos, voices echoing off 600-year-old stone walls. It is an unlikely combination, a medieval library and a world-class music school, sharing a courtyard that most of Manchester doesn't know exists.
Humphrey Chetham wanted his money to educate people and give them access to books. Over 370 years later, his library is still open, still free, and still doing exactly what he asked. The books are older. The collection is larger. Marx and Engels have come and gone, and their ideas have risen and fallen and been argued about in a thousand languages. But the door is still open, and anyone can walk in.
The oldest free public library in the English-speaking world, hiding in a medieval courtyard behind Manchester Cathedral. If you've never been, go. If you have, go again. Some places deserve more than one visit, and this is one of them.