Whenever there's a new Stephen Poliakov drama on TV, I end up thinking: "It was good, but not as good as Shooting the Past.
That seminal play about the threat to an old library was surely one of the best pieces of BBC drama since the halcyon days of Play for Today.
As it happens, there’s a not dissimilar drama taking place in the town of Stafford at present. It surrounds the William Salt Library. The library is both a collection and a building, and that is at the heart of the problem.
William Salt was a London banker, who collected a priceless archive of drawings, manuscripts and books related to Staffordshire. The collection was donated to the town after Salt’s death in 1872, and since 1918 has been housed in a Grade II* Georgian building in Eastgate Street.
The Salt is practically unique, and I know of only one comparable institution, and that’s in York. Two years ago I described it as a “treasure”, though it’s a treasure increasingly being buried. At present the Salt is open only 15 hours a week, with further annual closures on top of that.
Today the William Salt stands at a crossroads. Acting on advice over storage conditions and the cost of maintaining the current premises, the library trustees are proposing to move the collection out, and deposit it instead in the County Record Office, which stands at the rear of the old library. The latter would then be sold off.
That proposal has caused much fur to fly in Stafford, not least because it was in the press before any of the users were told.
In the blue corner, then, we have the (unelected) trustees, who have responsibility for the collection alone. In the red corner stand the Friends of the William Salt, who raise funds for the library (both building and books), and assist in conservation. Archival responsibility on one side; love on the other.
The promise is that, in its new home, the library hours would be increased, though only reversing the cuts enacted in 2012. The record office is a nice place to study, but lacks the warmth, atmosphere and sheer browsability of the Salt. If you want to enjoy it, get in quick.
* Dr Chris Upton is Reader in Public History at Newman University Birmingham
