In Celebration of Libraries: Woolhope Club Conference 2024

‘In Celebration of Libraries’: A Woolhope Club Conference on the 150^th Anniversary of the Opening of the Hereford Free Library and Museum in Broad Street on 8 October 1874

College Hall | 8 October 2024 | Tickets £10 / £20 

It was, so the Hereford Times reported, a day of memorable celebration for ‘an ornament to the city’.  One hundred and fifty years on from that great day, the Woolhope Club, which was instrument in the founding of the free library and museum, are rightly commemorating this great event with a celebratory conference.

The speakers will be: Simon Pepper, professor emeritus of architecture at Liverpool University, who will give a keynote address on ‘The Free Library Movement in Britain and its Buildings’; John Eisel, a distinguished local Historian and three-time president of the Woolhope Club, will talk on ‘Libraries in Hereford in the early Nineteenth Century’; Howard Tomlinson, the current president, will lecture on ‘The Building of the Free Library and Museum in Broad Street’.  The afternoon will conclude with talks on the future of the Broad Street building and the city library by (respectively) Damian Etheraads, the Hereford Museum and Art Gallery Lead, and Jonathan Chedgzoy, the Herefordshire Libraries and Archives Manager.  The programme will start with a buffet lunch at 1pm before the first lecture at 1.30pm.  Tea will be taken between the talks at about 3.15, and the conference will conclude by 5pm.

Howard Tomlinson: President of the Woolhope Club, 2024-25

Tickets in advance can be purchased via the website or the cathedral shop:

£20 (including lunch and tea)
£10 (including tea, but excluding lunch)  

On the door they will cost £25 and £15 respectively.