The Collections Story - Fantastic Books and Where to Find Them

For World Book Day and with 2026 being the National Year of Reading, it’s the perfect opportunity to highlight our book collections, and the work that’s underway to prepare and move them to our two new centres.

The majority of our local history books make up our ‘Central’ collection, numbering over 4,500! We collect books relating to Cheshire people, places and events, both fiction and non-fiction. A 19th century book about the history of Frodsham might be snug on a shelf next to Alan Garner’s Booker-Prize nominated ‘Treacle Walker’ (the legends and folklore from Alderley Edge can be found in his work).

All our Central collection books were published after 1800, and we continue to add newly published work to the shelves. One of the latest books to be added was a history of 50 buildings in Macclesfield, published last year. If a book pre-dates 1800, we add it to our Rare Books collection.

After 1800 there was a rapid expansion of printing technology and publishing houses, so books printed before this time are likely to be almost unique examples of their type. A smaller collection of over 200 books, on a wide range of subjects, these Rare Books must still relate to Cheshire in some way. Good examples are ‘Mathematical Magick: Or, the Wonders that may be Performed by Mechanichal Geometry’ (1680) by John Wilkins who was also a Bishop of Chester, and ‘Natural history of Lancashire, Cheshire and the Peak in Derbyshire: with an account of the British, Phoenician, Greek and Roman antiquities in those parts’ (1700) by Charles Leigh. Titles were longer in those days!

Our oldest book (we think) is a third edition of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon, published in 1527. Higden wrote his history of the world as a Benedictine monk, residing at the monastery of St. Werburgh in Chester in the early 14th century.

We also manage local history collections in libraries across Cheshire West and Chester and Cheshire East in partnership with library teams. Our Catalogue will tell you where a particular book is held, so you may be able to pop to your local library to continue your research while we are still closed to the public.

We have now completed an inventory check and review of our Central and Rare Book collections. Some have required re-packaging and re-labelling, and we have also been improving catalogue records, to help you find the books you need. There will be books to browse on open shelves in our new centres, so we are now making sure that both our Chester and Crewe centres will have sufficient copies of key texts.

Some books will remain cared for more securely in our strongrooms and can be requested for research as soon as we open. Rare books will remain in Chester as they sometimes need our conservators’ skills to keep them accessible. Just a few more months to wait until they are yours to discover again!