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Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
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Katherine Johnson’s mathematical calculations helped guide some of America’s most important early space missions while she confronted the racial and gender barriers faced by Black women in twentieth-century America.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
| Minet Library | |
|---|---|
 Minet Library | |
 | |
| Location | Knatchbull Road London, SE5, United Kingdom |
| Type | Public library |
| Established | 1890 |
| Branches | 1 |
| Collection | |
Items collected | Books, public records, photographs Lambeth Archives |
| Access and use | |
Access requirements | Open - Lambeth Archives Closed - public library |
| Other information | |
| Website | www.lambeth.gov.uk/places/minet-library |
The Minet Library is a public library in the London Borough of Lambeth in South London. The library opened in 1890.
The building was home to Lambeth Archives for 133 years, however this facility moved to Brixton Hill in 2024.[1]
The Minet Library was built by William Minet and opened in 1890. Minet was a descendant of French Huguenots who immigrated to London in the 1700s, and in 1889 he also gave 14½ acres of land to the London County Council to create Myatt's Fields Park.[2]
The library was designed to be a church hall for St. James The Apostle on Knatchbull Road and to be used by the tenants of the local estate. When Minet's first wife, Alice Evans, died in 1887 before the building was completed, he decided to turn it into a public library in her memory.[3][2]
The library might have been completed before the nearby Durning Library and South Lambeth Tate Library, but was interrupted when the contractor went bankrupt, Minet was interested in the co-operative movement and decided to form a private company on co-operative lines. The experiment was successful and the library, which was designed by George Hubbard who also designed nearby Longfield Hall, was finished and opened in 1890.[2]
Hubbard's octagonal library building, in the Gothic Revival style, was partially destroyed by an incendiary bomb on 8 December 1940 during The Blitz. The fire destroyed 18,585 books. Around 6,700 books were salvaged, and half of those were moved to Longfield Hall where a temporary library was established.[4] The Surrey Collection, a collection of archive records established by William Minet, survived the fire because they were housed in a strong room.[5]
The library was rebuilt in 1956 and became part of the London Borough of Lambeth public library service and official home of the Lambeth Archives.[6]
In the late 1990s, the library began to suffer from cuts to local council funding, and Lambeth Council proposed closing the library on a number of occasions. This culminated in 2015 with Lambeth Council closing the library (but not the archive) and proposing to contract Greenwich Leisure Limited (GLL) to convert part of the building into a gym, with a limited library service continuing to operate.[7]
The magazine Private Eye reported in May 2017 that Lambeth Council had begun talking to GLL about contracting them to turn Minet Library and others in the borough into gyms before a plan by library staff and local residents to save the libraries was rejected in 2015.[8]
In May 2016, despite protests by local residents, the Minet Library was closed by the Lambeth Council.[9][10] The library reopened in 2017, but with reduced services. It is currently operating as a self-service library.[11][12][13]
Lambeth Archives and the local history reference collection re-located to a purpose-built archive building in Brixton in January 2024.
Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
The Minet Library is a public library in the London Borough of Lambeth in South London. The library opened in 1890. The building was home to Lambeth Archives for 133 years, however this facility moved to Brixton Hill in 2024.
Lambeth Archives is an archive in South London, managed by the London Borough of Lambeth. Containing records of Lambeth businesses, organisations and individuals. Until 2023, for 133 years the Lambeth Archives collections were housed at Minet Library, 52 Knatchbull Road. In February 2024, Lambeth Archives reopened at its new purpose built facility, 16 Brixton Hill. The archive holds various documents for tracing family history, including parish records, electoral registers, civil registers, census returns, poll books, cemetery records, trade and commercial directories, and historic newspapers. The archive is open to the public free of charge. The Archives has an exhibition space which is used to showcase the work of local creatives and occasionally as a meeting area.
William Minet (1851–1933) was a British landowner and philanthropist, of Huguenot descent.
Olive Elaine Morris (26 June 1952 – 12 July 1979) was a Jamaican-born British-based community leader and activist in the feminist, black nationalist, and squatters' rights campaigns of the 1970s. At the age of 17, she was assaulted by Metropolitan Police officers following an incident involving Clement Gomwalk, a Nigerian diplomat in Brixton, South London. She joined the British Black Panthers, becoming a Marxist–Leninist communist and a radical feminist. She squatted buildings on Railton Road in Brixton; one hosted Sabarr Books and later became the 121 Centre, another was used as offices by the Race Today collective. Morris became a key organiser in the Black Women's Movement in the United Kingdom, co-founding the Brixton Black Women's Group and the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent in London. When Morris studied at the Victoria University of Manchester, her activism continued. She was involved in the Manchester Black Women's Co-operative and travelled to China with the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding. After graduating, Morris returned to Brixton and worked at the Brixton Community Law Centre. She became ill and received a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. She died at the age of 27. Her life and work have been commemorated both by official organisations – Lambeth Council named a building after her – and by the activist group the Remembering Olive Collective (ROC). Friends and comrades recalled her as fearless and dedicated to fighting oppression on all levels. She was depicted on the B£1 note of the Brixton Pound and has featured on lists of inspirational black British women.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →The Greenwood District.