The Old Library, Pleasley Hill

Image: © Alan Murray-Rust Taken: 7 May 2023

Dated 1906, with the rest of the inscription above the entrance effaced. It was one of the large number of libraries funded by Andrew Carnegie, and the Carnegie Legacy website https://carnegielegacyinengland.wordpress.com/about/home/ has the following information (quoted from elsewhere) 'The architect was John E Goodacre. “Thomas Smith was a Mansfield Town Councillor who lived at 18 Bagshaw Street. By profession he was a builder and donated a piece of land further along the street on which the Free Library was built. . . When the Library was closed, Mansfield Borough Council, as it then was, put the building up for sale for £575. It was bought by a local butcher, Alf Fensome, who had it converted into a bungalow, in which state it still exists today.”' The library is reported as closed as early as 1941, when it was converted to a British Restaurant, although this may have been a temporary wartime expedient rather than permanent closure.

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