After the mobile library service closed down, the Dallington Old School village hall committee decided to start a weekly community library cafe to fill the gap. We knew that the hall had once served as a Reading Room so it seemed an appropriate activity. (You can read more about the library cafe here https://dallington.org.uk/village-hall/).
A little while later, when clearing out a cupboard in the Snooker Room which had been badly affected by damp in the past due to an old leak in the ceiling, we found a small collection of books almost entirely covered in mould and some of which had also been nibbled by mice (or very large bookworms). However, we were delighted to find that one of these was a note book which had clearly been used to record Reading Room book loans in 1921.
I took the notebook home to try to clean it up – a few days in the freezer to kill the mould spores, and a careful wipe with a cloth, and I was able to photograph all the pages to enable us to do some further research. It was fascinating to find out more about the regular borrowers and what they were reading in 1921.
I was intending to give a talk for the Local History society about this but that was cancelled due to Covid. So as part of this year’s National Village Halls Week, which is celebrating 100 years of village halls, I thought I’d post a very short introduction to the Reading Room and what our forebears were reading 100 years ago. You can read it here
Dallington History 