CHETHAM'S
LIBRARY MANCHESTER
Marx and Engels Have a Devil of Conversation
Where
did Communism begin? Most people would answer Russia to that trivia
question. The more correct
answer might be Manchester England, also
the birth place of industrial capitalism in its purest form, though the
effect the theories of Karl Marx have had on the world are hardly trivial.
With the stepping down of the last true communistic holdout Fidel Castro
in Cuba (reputed to be worth a billion
dollars, not bad for a communist) the purist economic ideas of Marx and
his friend Frederich Engels have been twisted and faded in the face of
politics and human nature.
Chetham’s
Library is the oldest complete building in Manchester, first constructed
in the gothic early 1400s as a residence for the clergy
of Christ's College. It was turned
into a library by Humphrey Chetham in 1653 as part of a charity school
for
boys and
a free public
library
for scholars and the poor who had no access to the private libraries
of the nobility. It was here in the spirit in the midst of the 1840’s
that Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, would sit at a square wooden table
in an alcove of the library reading room to discuss and argue the concepts
that would lead Marx’s world changing manifesto. Engels had been
living in Manchester where the industrial revolution had taken hold with
the mechanization of textile manufacture, and the power of the steam
engine found its home (see Manchester
Museum Science and Industry).
The
Chetham Library has survived in its several hundred year old original
state with rows of historic manuscripts in tall wooden bookcases underneath
the half-timbered arched gothic ceiling on the upper floor. Not as grand
as the larger John Rylands Library, a few block away, with its world
renowned book collection and neo-gothic revival architecture, the Chetham
is a magnificent and moody leftover from the real gothic age. Marx and
Engels are not the only radical thinkers to have haunted the place. Elizabethan
Scholar, astronomer and alchemist, John
Dee, one time a warden of the library in the
early 1600s, was fascinated by the occult and like a real life Dr.
Faustus, was supposed to have summoned the devil to the library. In
one of the rooms
a hoof-print
is
burned into the dark wood where it is said the devil left his signature,
though whether the mark of a real devil or the devilish prank of an enterprising
student is perhaps open to conjecture.
The
library is the only building open to the public on the grounds of what
is now the prestigious Chetham's
School of Music for young musicians.
The Chetham Library is free to enter and like a hidden secret, to get
in you tell the security guard at the school gate you want to visit
the
library.
You
press the
bell
at
the
downstairs
door to call a library docent. To look around you can wander by yourself,
but if you want to look at old volumes or even the reading list of books
read by Marx and Engels, you’ll have to ask the attendants on duty.
On Wednesdays during the school term there are free concerts combined
with tours. © Bargain
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Chethams
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