Walkley Library is a public lending library in Walkley, a suburb of the City of Sheffield in England. It stands at the junction of Walkley Road and South Road in one of the busiest parts of the area. It is one of 27 suburban branch libraries within the city. The building is a Carnegie library, the only library in Sheffield to receive Carnegie funding, it is also a Grade II listed building as are the boundary walls and commemorative plaque in front of the library.
Construction of the library began in August 1904 to serve the growing population of Walkley, the suburb had become a popular area with commuters with the arrival of the Sheffield Tramway in the early 1900s. The city's Libraries and Museums Committee were lobbied by various local dignitaries to build a library and the search for a suitable site began. Moor End on Commonside was considered but was deemed unsuitable for a library, in the end, William Craven, an insurance agent from Industry Street found five old cottages at the corner of South Road and Walkley Road which were for sale. Sheffield Corporation paid £1,500 for the land to the owner Mr. William Addy Hall.
Local Liberal Councillor J.W. Crowther had the task of supervising the building of the library without incurring any cost to local tax payers and he approached Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish American steel magnate who had set up a fund to cover the cost of new libraries. Carnegie agreed to provide £3,500 in two stages for the construction of the library with the proviso that Sheffield Libraries Committee consented to spend no less than £230 per annum on its upkeep. Local architects were invited to submit plans for the new library that would not only be within the £3,500 budget but also correspond with the specifications drawn up by the Sheffield City Surveyor. These specifications included an entrance hall with drinking fountain, separate reading rooms for men and women and a lending library and rooms for the librarian and the committee.
The submitted plans were judged by the renowned London architect William Emerson. The winner was Henry Leslie Paterson of the architects Hemsoll & Paterson of Bank Street, Sheffield. Paterson had previously designed many buildings for the council including Upperthorpe and Morley Street Schools. The building contractor was Daniel O’Neil of Scotland Street and the foundation stone was laid on August 9, 1904, by Alderman Brittain. The building was complete at the end of 1905 after 16 months of work and was opened by the Lord Mayor of Sheffield Herbert Hughes. Councillor Crowther died in 1916 and a commemorative plaque was placed in his honour on the boundary wall in front of the library in 1927. On November 3, 1924, a junior section was added to the library in what had been the women's reading room. The building had internal alterations in 1954 which included the relocation of the junior library to the former men's reading room and the demolition of an internal wall enabled the main lending library to be extended. [1]
This group was set up in 1992 after it was rumoured that the library was to be closed by Sheffield City Council. In the end the library remained open although six branch libraries did close in the city in 1995. The group's aims are to help maintain a library service in Walkley, to support improvements to the library service, to encourage the provision of a wide range of activities which will extend the use and popularity of the library service and building and to help maintain and improve the unique Walkley Library building. The group lobbied for and gained listed building status for the building from English Heritage in February 1993. [2]
In 2013 library closures are once again on Sheffield City Council's agenda. In September 2013 Walkley Library was identified as one of 15 city libraries slated for closure in the Sheffield City Council library review. [3] A campaign group called Walkley Against Library Closures (WALC) formed in February 2013 to fight the closure of all city public libraries including Walkley.
Walkley Community Library Futures Group (WCLFG) was a group formed by local residents to examine options for running Walkley Library as a community endeavour, given the withdrawal of public funding. They submitted a draft business plan in January 2014 which was accepted, then submitting an Associate Library business plan in July 2014. A bid was also submitted by The Forum Cafe' Bars Ltd. Both bids were accepted by Sheffield City Council, who suggested that the parties work together to create a combined library and cafe bar facility.
Walkley Carnegie Library [4] was formed by local residents, including members of WCLFG, to run the library after it was handed over by Sheffield City Council on November 17, 2014. Although the original intention was to develop a combined library and cafe (with Forum Cafe' Bars Ltd, subsequently renamed True North Brew Co Ltd), this has not come to fruition as the proposed partnership ended in 2018.
The building consists of two wings and is in the Tudor Revival style with the stone for the external walls being quarried locally at the Bole Hills quarry at Crookes with the smooth dressing stone around the entrance and windows coming from Stoke Hall at Calver. The building originally had a small ornamental wooden cupola over the entrance hall but this was removed in 1956 after it was deemed to be unsafe. The building is small but quite striking with its large bay windows and distinctive entrance which consists of a portico with six Ionic columns with a curving staircase leading to it. [5] [6]
Birmingham Central Library was the main public library in Birmingham, England, from 1974 until 2013, replacing a library opened in 1865 and rebuilt in 1882. For a time the largest non-national library in Europe, it closed on 29 June 2013 and was replaced by the Library of Birmingham. The building was demolished in 2016, after 41 years, as part of the redevelopment of Paradise Circus by Argent Group. Designed by architect John Madin in the brutalist style, the library was part of an ambitious development project by Birmingham City Council to create a civic centre on its new Inner Ring Road system; however, for economic reasons significant parts of the master plan were not completed, and quality was reduced on materials as an economic measure. Two previous libraries occupied the adjacent site before Madin's library opened in 1974. The previous library, designed by John Henry Chamberlain, opened in 1883 and featured a tall clerestoried reading room. It was demolished in 1974 after the new library had opened.
Townhead is a district within the city of Glasgow, Scotland. It is one of Glasgow's oldest areas, and contains two of its major surviving medieval landmarks – Glasgow Cathedral and the Provand's Lordship.
Manchester Central Library is the headquarters of the city's library and information service in Manchester, England. Facing St Peter's Square, it was designed by E. Vincent Harris and constructed between 1930 and 1934. The form of the building, a columned portico attached to a rotunda domed structure, is loosely derived from the Pantheon, Rome. At its opening, one critic wrote, "This is the sort of thing which persuades one to believe in the perennial applicability of the Classical canon".
Hillsborough is a suburb in north-west Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England. The centre of the district is popularly thought to be 'Hillsborough Corner' where Langsett Road, Middlewood Road, Holme Lane and Bradfield Road all meet. The Hillsborough ward population at the 2011 Census was 18,605.
John Henry Price – more commonly referred to as Henry Price – was the first person to hold the office of 'City Architect' in Manchester Corporation's newly created City Architect's Department of 1902. He was responsible for a number of well known Manchester landmarks, and is credited with influencing the design of other buildings constructed during his tenure, such as Manchester Fire Station.
Hillsborough House, later called Hillsborough Hall, is a large, stone-built mansion constructed in the Adam style in the latter part of the 18th century. It stands 2+1⁄2 miles north-west of the centre of Sheffield at grid reference SK331901 in the suburb of Hillsborough within Hillsborough Park, a council-owned public recreational area. For 124 years the house was a private dwelling, but since 1906 it has housed the Hillsborough branch library. It is a Grade II listed building as are the coach house and stables which stand 22 yards (20 m) north-west of the main house.
The Carnegie Library is in Egerton Street, Runcorn, Cheshire, England. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building and "possesses special architectural and historic interest within a national context". It was built in 1906 as an extension to Waterloo House and the existing library with a grant from Andrew Carnegie, and closed in 2012.
Toowoomba City Hall is a heritage-listed town hall at 541 Ruthven Street, Toowoomba, Toowoomba Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Willoughby Powell and built in 1900 by Alexander Mayne. It is also known as Toowoomba Town Hall. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.
Walkley is a suburb of Sheffield, England, west of Burngreave, south of Hillsborough and north-east of Crookes.
The Carnegie Library is in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, England. The foundation stone of St. Anne's Library was laid in August 1904 and the building was officially opened on 10 January 1906. The land was given by the St. Anne's on the Sea Land and Building Company, and Andrew Carnegie paid for the building itself. This was the first library in the town. There is also a library at Lytham.
Leeds Central Library is a public library in Leeds. Situated in the city centre, on Calverley Street, it houses the city library service's single largest general lending and reference collection and hosts the Leeds Art Gallery.
Upperthorpe is a suburb of the City of Sheffield, England. It lies 1.2 miles (2 km) west of the city centre. The suburb falls within the Walkley ward of the City. It is an area of residential housing and is bounded by the suburbs of Walkley to the north, Crookes to the west and Netherthorpe to the south.
The Johannesburg City Library is situated in the central business district of the City of Johannesburg. The Library is located in an Italianate building designed by John Perry which first opened in 1935. It has over 1.5-million books and items in its collection and more than 250 000 members.
Netherthorpe is a suburb of the City of Sheffield in England. It is one mile (1.6 km) west of the city centre. It is mostly an area of local government built housing situated on a considerable slope running downhill from the Brook Hill roundabout, at a height of 350 feet (107m), towards the Shalesmoor roundabout at a height of 160 feet (50m) over a distance of half a mile (1 km). It is bounded by the suburbs of Upperthorpe to the north, Crookesmoor to the west and the dualled Inner Ring Road to the east. The suburb falls within the Walkley ward of the City.
The Carnegie Library is a public library in the London Borough of Lambeth in Herne Hill, South London. The library opened in 1906. It closed as a public lending library in 2016 as a result of cuts to funding, reopening in 2018 with a reduced librarian service.
The Burley Branch Library was open on Cardigan Road, Burley, Leeds, West Yorkshire, between 1926 and 2016. It was established on vacant industrial land adjacent to a printing works and railway depot by Leeds City Council, and was majority financed by Carnegie. It is built to a design by Gilbert Burdett Howcroft. The Council closed the library in February 2016 due to its poor condition and being surplus to operational requirements. The building was listed at Grade II in 2017 and remains awaiting redevelopment.
The Westland District Library is the public library in Hokitika, on the West Coast of New Zealand. Beginning as the Hokitika Literary Society in 1866, it occupied a Carnegie library building from 1908 as the Hokitika Free Public Library, moving out in 1975.
The Old Borough Library is a former public library in Stafford, Staffordshire, England, opened in 1914. It is a Grade II listed building.
Hove Library is a public lending library serving Hove, part of the English city of Brighton and Hove. The "highly inventive" Edwardian Baroque/Renaissance Revival-style building, a Carnegie library designed by the architects Percy Robinson and W. Alban Jones of Leeds, opened in 1908 on Church Road, succeeding a library founded in 1890 in a house on the nearby Grand Avenue. The building has been listed at Grade II by Historic England for its architectural and historical importance.
