City Libraries

The Radford Library I used to go to was at Jubilee Crescent and I would have slept there if I could. I read the whole series of Andrew Lang Fairy Tales and the usual Heidi, Black Beauty etc. I walked all the way from Beake Avenue just by Hill Farm School on my own and I couldn't have been more than 8 or 9. I used to pop into Perks or the Post Office to do a bit of shopping for my mum sometimes. I started my own library for the kids in the street with books that me and my dad got at jumble sales and I made library cards and pockets in the books too. It didn't last long. The first day I opened my library I had a problem. When I went to bed that night I couldn't sleep for thinking about the books not coming back. God bless my dad. He walked around the street with me while I asked for my books back and checked them in forever. No surprise that I became a bookseller and then a librarian. I live in Virginia now and it wasn't until about 10 years ago that my brother told me about the Carnegie Library at Hearsall Common. He's big in the U.S. Apparently, he built quite a lot up and down the country and Coventry lucked out.

There was another library opened by Carnegie, with Siegfried Bettman the mayor in toe. It was Stoke Library, corner of Kingsway and Walsgrave Road.

I used that library when I lived in Swan Lane, I read all the Biggles books

You don't know the value of libraries until you need them. Until the lockdown I was using Earlsdon Library regularly, and the volunteers running it are doing great work keeping the place going. It was great to see classes coming in to look at the books and use the facilities. As a school governor we ran an initiative to discover how many books children had in their homes. A surprisingly large number answered none.

Gulson Library

Andrew Carnegie started a foundation which, I think, was to fund these libraries in perpetuity. That Coventry still has three thrills this one time school and public librarian who closed her children's bookstore just before she was overtaken by Amazon.

Here is the extraordinary list of libraries that Carnegie helped to fund, just those in Europe.

Tamworth still has the Carnegie Centre building which was the first library in the town, though it does not appear to be on the list. It is about to become a restaurant.

Nooooo. Do they have another library to take over?

It hasn't been used as a library since 1973 when a new library was built close by. The Carnegie centre became the home to various voluntary organisations such as Age Concern. Apparently it still has many if the original features.

New one to me of the Gulson Library interior, (c) Coventry Archives. Makes it all the more sad for its loss.

I can just about remember going to the Gulson Library but can't recall if it looked like that. I think they had a record library there when records were records.

Hi Anne & Neil, Brings back memories of school homework, usually three evenings a week.

Hi Anne I think this is the Gulson Records section - what do you think?