Guildhall Library

The collection has its greatest depth on topics specifically concerned with the City, but also contains much material on other parts of metropolitan London.

This "fayre and large librarye", as John Stow called it, began in a building on the south side of Guildhall Chapel.

[citation needed] By 1550 the building had been let to Sir John Aylif, surgeon to Henry VIII, as a market house for the sale of clothes which also suggests that the first library had come to an end by this time.

Only one book from the original collection has since returned to Guildhall Library: a thirteenth-century copy of Petrus Riga's Aurora, a metrical Latin version of the Bible, purchased from an antiquarian dealer.

It was not until 1824 that the Corporation of London appointed a committee to "inquire into the best method of arranging and carrying into effect in the Guildhall, a Library of all matters relating to this City, the Borough of Southwark, and the County of Middlesex".

The Corporation and Common Council decided that from now on access to its books and library treasures should be made available to the public free of charge.

A substantial stone structure, it adopted the Perpendicular Gothic in style in order to complement the neighbouring Guildhall building.

By then the library contained about 60,000 volumes of works covering the history of London, its architecture, topography, its suburbs and a large collection of early printed plays connected with the city.

As part of the post-war Guildhall reconstruction scheme, the architects Sir Giles Scott, Son and Partners were asked to design a new library.

It was a very modern library for its time; a Country Life article suggested that with its card indexes and easily accessible shelves it could well be the most efficient machine for the retrieval of information in the world – but they had to keep the old pneumatic tube system in as nothing could beat it!