|
|
 |
| |
 Staff at the Highgate Library celebrate the centenary with a giant cake and period costumes. Far right: New Journal columnist Rose Hacker, who was born in the same year the library opened, with best-selling author Tracy Chevalier; right: actor Roger Lloyd Pack with Camden Libraries general manager Katharine Chasey.
|
Celebebrations overdue aslibrary marks 100 years of shelf life
THE doors of Highgate branch library opened for the first time on October 18, 1906, and on Wednesday, exactly 100 years later, library regulars gathered to mark the centenary.
Among the guests was New Journal columnist Rose Hacker, born the year the Chester Road library opened in Highgate Newtown. She was joined on stage by novelist Tracy Chevalier, actor Roger Lloyd Pack, poet Jehane Markham, historian Ian Holmes and Lib Dem councillor and executive member for leisure Flick Rea. They read from a selection of books relating to the library and the area.
Ms Chevalier, who lives in Kentish Town, read from her novel Falling Angels, which features a scene from the opening of the library.
She said: “It’s a marvellous resource and a marvellous occasion to be here.”
Wearing a “Votes for Women” scarf she had been sent by a group of fans – in her book, the character Caroline Black is a suffragette – she added that she was thrilled to meet Ms Hacker.
She told the 80-strong audience: “I was privileged to sit next to Rose. I heard she actually knew Emily Pankhurst and other members of the suffragette movement. Suddenly, 100 years doesn’t seem so long ago.” The library was paid for by a £40,000 donation from American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.
Camden archive historian Malcolm Holmes explained that the gift helped the borough of St Pancras catch up with neighbours in Hampstead and Holborn by setting up a library. He said: “Speaking at the laying of the foundation stone on June 14, 1906, the then Mayor of St Pancras Councillor Hickling said that four to five years ago their borough had been known as ‘darkest St Pancras’ because they had not adopted the public library acts of 1850 – but with this library they could ‘wipe away the stain’.”
Hampstead and Holborn had adopted the act in the 1890s, but it took the donation from Carnegie to establish the branch. As a library display celebrating the centenary explained, Carnegie said: “There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the free public library. This republic of letters, where neither rank, office nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.”
|
 |
| |
|
|
|
