Island Life: St Mary’s Library, Isles of Scilly. By Linda Thomas, Librarian.

St Mary’s Library has moved around over the past 40 years. When I worked in it previously it was sited at the old school just out of town, then downsized to the Wesleyan Chapel in the town, then downsized again to the old ‘Job Centre’ room, then moved to another site at the new school. Then nine years ago, it finally came here to this wonderful modernised old building by Porthcressa beach with glorious views out of the window.   

  

Like many libraries we have had to embrace change to survive and with the closure of the main reception area for our Unitary Council, the Library has now taken on the role of ‘One Stop Shop’/ Council reception.  Because of this our opening hours and staffing have had to change and adapt. We have gone from 10-12.30 & 2.30-4.30 each weekday, to 9-4.30 hence additional staff needed to cover. My role has remained as Librarian and I work solely in the library unlike the other ‘Hub’ staff who share their time between library and the other council reception site. So my working day can include anything from taking money for council things (like tax, rent, licences, planning, waste site, selling waste sacks), booking visits to the dump, booking classes for the swimming pool, and adult learning and dealing with incoming post. Then there is the library work, issuing and discharging books, printing, signing up temporary members (we allow visitors to borrow books), organising any school visits or other events, exchanging books with Cornwall (generally about nine crates of assorted books every eight weeks) to keep our stock rolling. Organising events to launch such as The Reading Challenge, plus like most other libraries in holiday destinations you become the visitor information desk and are asked weird and wonderful things.  We are the only public library for our five inhabited Islands. We pay a service charge to Cornwall Council Libraries to enable our library members to access all the online services they offer, such as eBooks/eAudio plus the exchanging of 200+ books every eight weeks and staffing costs. 

Like most other Libraries, we were affected by Covid and haven’t yet returned to a full ‘pre-Covid’ service. We are still quarantining books (we use wheelie bins outside the door for this), we are still requesting masks be worn, we have a limit on visiting time and numbers allowed in at one time. We are still working behind a plastic screen which has worked wonderfully well. During lockdown we were coming into work but working behind closed doors. We were on reduced hours like many others. We answered the phones and scanned mail to Council workers and offered an Argos type of service for members (select books and collect) and offered home delivery.        

Pre lockdown our previous year had gone well. We were working with Island Partnership (tourism) to accommodate visiting authors (Kate Rhodes was the most recent), troubadours, children’s craft sessions.  As well as regular visits from children’s services holding story times, school class visits, Brownies, whist and bridge sessions, monthly book group meetings. We had a Telling Tales / Reading Aloud fortnightly session for adults, where anyone comes along and reads anything they like (poetry, a short anecdote, short paragraph from a book) out loud and finish with a cuppa. The library also offers weekly Computer support with a tutor in attendance for two hours. We also had a Christmas event: Santa in his Grotto at the Library!    I have been very lucky so far in having arty, creative, mums giving up their time to help with our displays (we discuss my ideas and they bring them to life) and the local Brownie group who create displays for us.  

We have a Facebook page and a blog which we put readers reviews on. Again, something else I have to do but unfortunately I am not very techie so am always reaching out for help. For the future, I would like to see our members being able to video link up with other libraries and their members, perhaps sharing things like the Telling Tales, or an online book group or just a social chat. So if any libraries out there have ideas how we could link I would love to hear from them. We are also looking to link more closely with the school and start a volunteer scheme for the summer. Do you have volunteers in your library, if so what jobs do they do?  I’d love to hear from you about what worked and what didn’t. 

Also, I’d love to hear from other libraries about any innovative fun events they may be running or new clubs.  Maybe we could set up a forum for this? 

Linda Thomas linda.thomas@scilly.gov.uk 

Phoenix Rising: Poltimore House (and its Library)

By Darren Bevin 

“… the genuine desire of the residents of Poltimore village to see a future for the derelict house—a phoenix rising from the ashes.” (Hemming: A Devon Life, 80) 

Poltimore House lies on the outskirts of Exeter, tucked away down a country lane close to the village bearing the same name. The oldest surviving parts of this once fine Tudor mansion date back to the second half of the sixteenth century and it was owned by the Bampfylde family from conception until the mid-twentieth century. Like many similar properties it struggled financially during the last century, in this instance culminating in a fire in 1987 that destroyed the west wing and affected the whole house leaving a ruinous shell. The damage was estimated in the region of £300,000. Further deterioration by the elements and vandalism occurred until a match-funded grant from English Heritage in 2005 resulted in the erection of protective scaffolding, a temporary roof and alarm system. 

The future is perhaps not as bleak as it may appear with restorative plans in place. The building is occasionally open to the public during the year and events are held in the grounds including music and theatre. A guided group tour in October 2021 allowed privileged access to this unique building. The metal barriers were opened allowing access to the building via planks of wood underneath a mass of intrusive but necessary scaffolding. Inside, the entrance hall led to an impressive staircase built in the 1830s (above) though the iron balustrade was stolen since the fire. There is no public access to the upper floors, but a doorway on the left led to the library. 

Of all the main rooms viewed on the tour, the library least conjured an impression of past glory days due to its multifarious usage in the twentieth century as explained later. The red-painted room was extremely cold and damp, with limited natural light from the top of otherwise boarded up windows. It felt slightly eerie with a wall full of writing, though this turned out simply to be a school project with household family names chalked on red (pictured below). Curled books were arranged untidily on the shelves and spilled over to the chairs and floor; books as seen in any second-hand bookshop with no connection to the house. On becoming the heiress to her father Lord Poltimore in 1936, one Sheila Bampfylde inherited much of the Poltimore furniture, pictures and books which were subsequently moved to her home at Hartland Abbey in north Devon and are still there today.  

The library had certainly seen better days. Indeed, in Jocelyn Hemming’s book on Poltimore House The House that Richard Built (2013), there is a picture of the same room from around 1912 full of plush furniture with books housed in tall, sturdy, expensive-looking bookcases competing for wall space with family paintings. Behind these are walls “papered in a Chinese-style design of exotic-looking green pheasants in branches of larch” (Hemming, 73-4). When the paper was removed later in the century, the names of the paperhangers were discovered underneath with a date in the 1880s. 

The end of the Edwardian period and the First World War marked the beginning of the decline for Poltimore House. The family left the property in 1913 and the 1,960 acre estate was put up for sale in 1921. Though the sale did not go through, the property was leased to a private school for girls from Somerset and became Poltimore College. In 1939 it then became Dover College for boys evacuated from Kent as the second world war commenced. At the end of the war the property was turned into a hospital to treat casualties. By this time, the library was a “five-bedded ward for men’s surgical cases” (Hemming, 86).  

For most of the twentieth century the room had not functioned as a library as the grand 18^th century saloon served this purpose whilst it had been a school. Back in the present day, the guided tour continued to explore other areas at ground level including the courtyard with its temporary protective roof (pictured above). The rest of the house is fascinating and well worth a visit along with the grounds set in thirteen acres, although the serenity is somewhat dispelled by the sound of the motorway. 

In England’s Thousand Best Houses, Simon Jenkins includes Poltimore House “out of expectation”. 

The house and the grounds are currently managed by two charities, Poltimore House Trust and the Friends of Poltimore House who, according to their website, “work together towards bringing the house and grounds back to full usage as an asset to locals and the wider community.” At the time of writing Poltimore House Trust is exploring plans for restoration and future usage, with work taking place in 2021/22 to renovate the 1831 porch, so watch this space.  

Bibliography 

Hemming, Jocelyn. A Devon House. The Story of Poltimore. (University of Plymouth Press, 2005) 

Hemming, Jocelyn. The House that Richard Built. Six Centuries at Poltimore House. (Poltimore House Press, 2013) 

Jenkins, Simon. England’s Thousand Best Houses. (Penguin, 2004) 

Stucley, Hugh. Hartland Abbey 1835 – 2020. The Story of the House and its Owners in Recent Times.