Our village has
the reasonably rare honour of having been given a Parish Library in the early
18th century. This was also known as a Bray Library, since it was a
gift of the ‘Trustees for Erecting Parochial Libraries’ associated with the
clergyman Thomas Bray (1656-1730).
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Thomas Bray
Bray was a
missionary and founder of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) in
1698. His particular interest was in publishing Christian texts for circulation
in the colonies – he spent time in Maryland, establishing parish libraries there in
order to plant the Church of England in North America. On his return to this
country in around 1701 he began establishing libraries
of theological works in parishes here too. Perhaps 80 parish
libraries were established in this way, of which Newport’s was one, having been
founded in 1710.
The records of
the SPCK happen to be held at the University Library, Cambridge. I invited a
rare libraries expert from the University Library, Mark Purcell, to inspect what remains of
Newport’s Bray library. The Library is held in the room above the porch, normally
firmly locked, and accessible only via a very steep spiral staircase (albeit now
nicely restored). The room itself is somewhat bare and very dusty. It consists
of two book cases and a book cupboard – perhaps the original cupboard used
for housing the Bray library, since the markings of where the catalogue would
have been pasted can still be seen on the inside of the cupboard door. Various
boxes of papers gather dust, and cobwebs and rodent droppings are much in
evidence.
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The original Bray Library cupboard |
According to an
excerpt from the official directory of Parochial Libraries, which Mark copied
for me, Newport received 72 volumes in 1710. More volumes were added in
1834. The collection was given up in 1870 but then re-established in 1879 and
further augmented in 1889 and 1896. Of the original 1710 volumes, only 49
remained by 1834 and then only 3 or 4 by 1959. Therefore, the Newport Bray
Library is, unfortunately, nothing of the sort, since very few of the
original books remain in the collection.
However, there
are lots of books, perhaps 800 or so, many of them dating from before 1800. These must be
associated with the periods of library augmentation in the 19th
century. Mark wondered if the story of the Library is connected with what
happened to the Newport Free Grammar School (now the Joyce Frankland Academy). The school was originally housed in the
building now known as Church House, directly opposite the church, before moving
to its new site in c.1878. Perhaps the building of the new school premises, and
the removal of the school from the immediate vicinity of the church, was the
reason why the room above the church was fitted out as a library room in around
1879. Certainly, Mark felt the fireplace now in the room dated from this time.
It seems a
shame that Newport's Parochial Library is not often seen or used, but then the texts
will be of little relevance to readers today (many of the earliest are in Latin or Greek). We already have a handwritten list
of the books in the room, but perhaps there is work to be done to write this
list up into a more detailed database, which could include a record of the
various handwritten inscriptions inside (sometimes giving evidence of the provenance of individual volumes). The first task, though, would be simply to dust the
room, though this is likely to be a filthy job that would then need to be repeated
on a fairly regular basis.
