Chetham's Library

Big note, this visit is tour‐only because Chetham’s is a working library which shares it’s site with a school (of music). Chetham’s is said ‘e’ like in ‘get’, not ‘ee’ like in ‘feet’—which changed four hundred years ago so it’s late to argue. Claims to be the “oldest public library in the English‐speaking world”—was founded in the 1600’s. The building goes back 100 or more years before that. It’s Grade 1 and officially of National Importance. Sometimes Chetham’s was near to being trashed, because the English could trash anything. The survival is a puzzle, but partly due to Chetham’s always being a half‐public something—landowner hall, minister’s college, prison, library, and some kind of school. A visitor on my tour said it reminded him of places in Oxford. An oddity is that this is where Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx conspired. Amiable tour guides and plenty to keep the attention for an hour or so. Unlikely, but Manchester has another Medieval attraction, Staircase House in Stockport—go there to see how people lived, go here for the photos.