Chetham Library UK, Manchester Resort
Rating: 8,5/10 (3502 votes)  The Chatham Library is the oldest public library in the whole of Great Britain, located in Manchester.
In 1653, according to the will of Humphrey Chatham, the Chatham Hospital was founded, which united the Chatham School of Music and the library itself under its roof. Since that time, the library acts as an independent charitable organization, visiting the library and using its funds is completely free for all categories of citizens.
Today, the library holds more than 100,000 volumes, more than half of which were published before 1851. In addition to books, there are magazines, newspapers, documentary and archival materials.
The Chatham Library is housed in a historic building in the heart of Manchester. It was bought in 1653 by the will of Humphrey Chatham. More than two dozen people were engaged in a large-scale purchase of books, manuscripts and documents in a variety of areas of knowledge. Their goal was to create a library that can be compared with the libraries of Cambridge and Oxford. From the opening of the library to the present day, 24 oak, decorated with carvings, armchairs for readers have been preserved in it.
It is interesting how the books were originally placed in the library - by the size of the volumes. Cataloging was carried out only in 1791, the cards were written in Latin, they indicated only the size and topic of the book. Also, all the books were chained to the shelves, this was a traditional practice of that era. Chaining books stopped only in the 18th century.
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