Statesman’s dream of a booklovers’ haven

Press, 2 July 1983, Page 17

Statesman’s dream of a booklovers’ haven

By

CHRIS SEGAR,

producer,

8.8. C. Radio Wales

William Ewart Gladstone, that most Victorian of British prime ministers, was a prodigious writer. He was also a reader on the grand scale. By the last decade of the nineteenth century, shortly before his death, his personal’ library numbered 30,000 books. Away from the hurly-burly of Westminster politics, Gladstone was most at home at the family seat at Hawarden Castle in north Wales, where he found peace and time to read. This was something he wanted to share, and his gift to the nation two years before he died in 1898 was his collection of books, housed in a library he had built for the purpose. His aim was to create a library in the countryside where others could go, as he had done, to stay, to study, to work alone and to rest, away from the day-to-day pressures of city, academic, or professional life. He succeeded. And, 87 years on, the unique institution he begot continues to flourish. St Deiniol’s library at Hawarden, named after the Welsh saint who also blesses the village church, is just across the way from the Gladstone family home at Hawarden castle, at the point where the Welsh hills rise from the Cheshire plain. It is a few kilometres from the ancient city of Chester on the River Dee and a three-hour train ride from London. Gladstone’s original building has long since been replaced. On his death, a national appeal raised the funds to create a fine new library, constructed in the local orangepink sandstone and fitted and panelled with all the elegance and craftsmanship of late nineteenth century Britain. It was extended by the Gladstone family shortly afterwards with a residential wing in the same style, so that under one roof, books and readers can be cloistered with a feeling that at St Deiniol’s time and life are for the pursuit of that special happiness that book lovers find in a world of books. Gladstone stipulated that his library should be run by a clerk in holy orders, but it welcomes men and women of any profession or creed. Today, the warden and chief librarian is the Rev. Peter Jagger, an exuberant Yorkshireman. Peter Jagger took me round. The bedrooms were similar to those of a modest country hotel; in the

grounds, a major landscaping project was going on to enhance the appearance of the building; and he told me of a new extension to create more room for books, now numbering 120,000. The main library, the epitome of libraries, with rich wooden shelves and balustrades, had an atmosphere of hush and earnestness. There were more books below, in the basement — a collection of 10,000 pre-1800 volumes in a massive vault. St Deiniol’s specialises in the nineteenth century. All Gladstone’s books are there, of course, so are his family papers. And books published since about him and his period. The social life of the Victorians, and their literature, is fully represented. So is theology, for the library acts as a training college for ordination to the priesthood; also well covered are philosophy, history, Greek and Latin (the whole of the Loeb classical library is there) and French, German and Italian writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There, too, are such treats as the Glynne collection of rare books (sixteenth - nineteenth century). For access to these, or just to read and write, one can stay at St Deiniol’s, for a week, a month, or even a year. It is an ideal setting for a sabbatical. The library has no public funding, but, thanks to its endowment income it is able to charge its residents modest fees, with university students paying even less. For full board in an historic house, with every facility for work, it is a scholar’s bargain. Apart from its intrinsic attraction to its readers it has its own croquet lawn and park, and is set at the gateway to some of Britain’s most dramatic landscape. People from all over the world go to St Deiniol’s. The most recent work on Mr Gladstone was, unsurprisingly, written there. But so too were the scripts of a popular television series. Both writers wanted the same thing: peace and quiet, and an atmosphere conducive to getting on with the job. “We are fulfilling the intentions of Mr Gladstone,” says Peter Jagger, “providing a haven for people to read, away from the pressures of life.” London Press Service.