A 100-year-old library that holds thousands of books and artefacts of Catholic history is to close while a search continues for new premises.
The Catholic National Library, which has around 70,000 books, was due to shut its doors yesterday at its home at St Michael’s Abbey, Farnborough in Hampshire.
In a statement the library said it was no longer able to provide “an adequate professional service to members.”
The secretary to the library’s trustees, Antony Tyler, explained the decision had been taken due to staffing difficulties but stressed that the trustees were still actively looking for new premises for the library.
The library includes an extensive collection of Catholic fiction and “mission registers” listing baptisms, marriages and deaths in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, before Catholic emancipation. The library has also been used as an information service for broadcasters wishing to research a facet of Catholic life for programmes.
Since 2007 the library has been based at Farnborough and for almost 40 years was located in the Friary, behind Westminster Cathedral, and run by the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement. The library has been looking for a new location for over a year.
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