The first library in Mountsorrel, as in many towns and villages, was the reading room established by the Mechanics Institute.
The Mechanics Institute was created in Mountsorrel following a public meeting on 24 January 1853 held in the National Schoolroom on Leicester Road, and chaired by Rev. T. Pruen. At the end of the meeting, 45 members were enrolled, and there was entertainment provided by Mr. Bussey with his ‘Musical Glasses!’. When they held their first lecture, in the Infants schoolroom, there were 120 Members including 40 quarrymen.
In 1854 the Lower Wesleyan School Room was taken over by the institute as a Reading Room. At their first annual meeting the president, the Rev Pruen, gave details of the annual report. Expenditure was £33 1s 11d, receipts were £37 10s 11d leaving a balance £4 1s 11d. Ten pounds had been spent on fitting out a comfortable reading room and the library now had 259 volumes with a good selection of newspapers and periodicals.
By 1855 however funds were in a reduced state due to many of the working members not able to afford the fees because of the depression and the cost of living. In order raise some funds an open air tea party and concert was arranged on ‘one of the beautful hills near Mountsorrel’ the band and singers gave their services for free. Over the next two years the institute flourished and in July 1857 they held another tea party and gala. Given below is a precis of a lengthy article from the Leicester Guardian.
“One half of the inhabitants of Mountsorrel have set the whole county an example which one tenth of them wil never imitate. With a population of only 1700 they have an institute com[arable to any town of larger pretension, circulating 600 to 700 volumes. This great Seminary differs from many others in the united support it gets from the working classes. John Martin, founder of the Mountsorrel Granite Company, recognises the merits of the institute in a locality so thickly peopled with the labouring classes. He pays half the subscription for forty of his employees to encourage them to join the institute and has contributed £25 towards the gala.
Eight hundred tickets were issued and six tables, each accommodating 140 people, were set up in Cufflin’s field. (William Cufflin’s farmhouse was what is now 19 Loughborough Road and his land was behind the house between Crown Lane and New Road (the entance to the quarry by RKD). Half a ton of plum cake was made and two coppers were erected for heating the water. The Mountsorrel Band started from the ‘Green’ about three o’clock and after perambulating the town headed to the field where a platform had been erected in front of the tea tables. The band poured forth its strains and as it was the time of the annual fair and a general holiday the summits of the surrounding rocks were crowded with spectators. After the speeches the company, now about 1500 persons, proceeded to various innocent recreative amusements, dancing being the main attraction.
We the representative of the Leicester Guardian left the place with the impression that there are noble hearts as well as noble rocks in Mountsorrel”.
Wow! Any road up we now move forward to 1879 when the institute leased, at a low rent from Lord Lanesborough, ‘Christ Church school’, fitted it up comfortably and repainted it. This must have been the old infants school, now the parish rooms, which had closed around 1873 with the opening of St Peters and Christ Church schools. It was reported that in the same year ‘there is a free reading room for the workmen engaged in the granite quarries in the north end’. So it appears that at this time there were two reading rooms operating in Mountsorrel, one by the granite company in what is now a private residence in Hugh Lupus Court and the other by the Mechanics Institute in what is now the parish room
In 1898, the Mechanic Institute had lost members and had a deficit of seven shillings. This was reported as being because people preferred to get their news from the “Leicester Daily Mercury,” which only cost half a penny. In 1900, the Adult School, which had 100 members, agreed to pay £5 annually to benefit from the Institute. They made this offer to prevent the Institute from closing due to a lack of funds. In 1908 the Mechanics Institue finally came to an end. The building and the library was transferred to the Parish Council.The Granite company reading room was sold to Miss Elsie Smith and she gave it to St. Peter’s Church and it became St. Peter’s Church Hall.
The first dedicated library for the village was to quote a resident a “glass box” built on the site of ancient cottages that had stood next to St Peter’s church, some since the 17th century. They included the old granite post office and a timber framed cottage built in 1612.
In 1957, the historian, W. G. Hoskins, wrote “this splendid monument of peasant building is made from three local and virtually indestructible materials, red granite from the hill behind, Barrow lime, and Swithland slate. It has stood splendidly for more than 250 years and is likely to last as long again, if it is spared by the local improvers.” In February 1958 the local improvers demolished it, along with the adjoining seventeen- century houses.
The ‘glass box’ lasted for 50 years and was demolished in 2007 and replaced by housing.The present library building is on the site of a former pub called the Blue Bell which later becme Twiggs Cottage. Following the death of Mrs Twigg in 1909 the cottage was demolished and the site donated by Lord Lanesborough to the congregation of Christ Church on which was built Church House, to be used as a Sunday School and function room.
By the 1990’s the cost of upkeep was becoming beyond the capacity of the church community, and the decision was made to sell the building. In 2001 it was purchased by a charitable trust. The building was restored and extended and Mountsorrel’s new library opened its doors to the public on October 16th, 2007.