St John’s College Library Newsletter L
MICHAELMAS 2017 As Master I am delighted to introduce this inaugural issue of the Library Newsletter. Since the College’s foundation in the early sixteenth century, the Library, stipulated as a necessity in the early statutes issued by Bishop John Fisher, has been central to its mission of education, religion, learning and research, as one would of course expect. As the College has grown and diversified over the years, so the size, composition and functions of the Library’s buildings and facilities have changed beyond all recognition. In the era when the educational syllabus and the objects of research in the University were devoted chiefly to theology and canon law, the College Library occupied a large chamber on the first floor of the range of First Court that runs southwards from the Great Gate. Its former location is still distinguished by the appropriately gothic arched windows that face into the Court, and outwards towards St John’s Street. In those days the books numbered no more than a few hundred. Keeping them secure was achieved by unsophisticated but perhaps no less effective means than today’s electronic tagging: some of the most valuable and frequently consulted volumes were simply chained to the bookcases and lecterns by their bindings. Growth in the number of students and the rapid proliferation of different kinds of learning and enquiry during the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries created the need for a much larger library. In the 1620s the College was fortunate to secure a very generous benefaction from a Johnian who had gone on to a successful career in politics and the church: John Williams,
VOLUME1, ISSUE 1 Bishop of Lincoln, and Keeper of the Great Seal. It is largely to him that we owe the splendid Old Library that forms the northern range of Third Court. Its beautiful interior has changed little since Williams’s time, and his name and offices explain the mysterious lettering above the oriel window on the west end of the building overlooking the river: I.L.C.S.: ‘Iohannes Lincolniensis Custos Sigilli’. Perhaps not surprisingly, Masters of the College have always felt a special care and regard for the Library, wherever it has been situated, and sometimes at a real cost to their personal amenity. In order to accommodate the grand staircase in E Second Court that ascends to the entrance to the Old Library, my seventeenth-century predecessor Dr Owen Gwyn gave up a substantial portion of the beautiful Elizabethan long gallery, now the Combination Room, which at that time was part of the Master’s Lodge. History repeated itself towards the end of the twentieth century, when plans for the modern Working Library – developed with great foresight under Dr Peter Goddard, and brought superbly to fruition under the late Professor Robert Hinde – meant that the Master had to relinquish a part of the Lodge garden to accommodate the three-storey wing housing Library offices and reading rooms that extends westwards from the back of Chapel Court towards the river. The occupant of the study in the Master’s Lodge consequently enjoys a satisfying 24/7 view of students at work over their books and laptops. Conversely, the view in the opposite direction means that readers in the Library can also assure themselves that the Master is regularly hard at work in his study, notwithstanding rumours – entirely without foundation – that a cardboard cutout is discreetly substituted at his desk from time to time.