Gladstone's Library

Gladstone's Library, Hawarden, North Wales.

Gladstone's Library, known until 2010 as St Deiniol's Library (Welsh: Llyfrgell Deiniol Sant), is a residential library in Hawarden, Flintshire, Wales. It is a Grade I listed building.[1]

Gladstone's Library is a residential library, Britain's only Prime Ministerial Library and the national memorial to the Victorian statesman, and four times Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone. (1809-1898).

It is home to a unique collection of more that 250,000 printed items, including renowned collection of theological, historical, cultural and political materials.

The library was founded by William Gladstone in 1894. he was eager to share his personal library with others and especially to those who faced financial constraint. He would allow bright children and young adults of the village of Hawarden to use his collection. His desire, his daughter Mary Gladstone said, was to 'bring together books who had not readers with readers who had no books'.

In 1895, at the age of 85, William Gladstone gave £40,000 and much of his own library. Armed with only his valet and one of his daughters, William Gladstone, wheeled 32,000 books three quarters of a mile between his home at Hawarden Castle and the library. He unpacked them and put them on to shelves using his own catalogue system.

In a characteristically sparse diary entry (dated 23 December 1895) he concisely described the library's founding thus: "I have this day constituted my trust at St Deiniol's. The cost of the work has been I think £41 to £42000, including some charges of maintenance to Dec. 31. 95. May God of His mercy prosper it." [2]

Following his death in 1898, a public appeal was launched for funds to provide a permanent building to house the collection and to replace the temporary structure. The £9,000 raised provided an imposing building, designed by John Douglas, which was officially opened by Earl Spencer on October 14, 1902 as the National Memorial to W.E.Gladstone. The Gladstone family were themselves to fulfill the founder's vision by funding the residential wing, which welcomed its first resident on June 29,1906.

Today the library is a hub of activity and welcomes visitors from across the globe. Its priority is to build and nurture a wide network of writers and thinkers in order to maintain William Gladstone's legacy of engagement with social, moral and spirituality questions.

References

  1. ↑ "St Deiniol's Library, Hawarden". British Listed Buildings. Retrieved 4 December 2013.
  2. ↑ H.C.G. Matthew [ed.], 'The Gladstone Diaries, Volume XIII: 1892-1896' (1994) Oxford: Clarendon Press, p432.

See also

Media related to Gladstone's Library at Wikimedia Commons

Coordinates: 53°11′09″N 3°01′38″W / 53.1859°N 3.0272°W / 53.1859; -3.0272

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