1. St James Street Library
Part of People Making Things Happen, a Big Lottery funded project exploring the history of The Mill.
The St James Street Library was opened in 1963. A small library, it had a well used children’s section for local families. Upstairs rooms were used as offices, some by local charities and other organisations.
Jenny Mensah talks about her memories of St James Street Library
“Me and my brother and my father would use it as a kind of in between pit stop place when we were going to the market and things like that. And we’d also use it to read children’s books, me and my brother were quite fascinated by children’s libraries. So we used to sit in there and read a lot when we were younger. It’s really hard to remember exactly how it would have looked, but I think there were lots and lots of children’s books. There may have been little games and abacuses and things like that, and there may have even been a kind of play area. I remember it being quite fun, and it feeling like quite a treat to go there. It felt like something that belonged to us in a weird way, like an extension of the house, we were there really quickly because we lived very close to it. So it was just always a feature of our lives. We couldn’t go anywhere without walking past it to get to the market, the station or the school. And when it closed down it became this kind of relic because I remember it closing and nothing happening for a really long time.”
St James Street Library archive images
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