Chetham Library

Chetham's Library sits in a couple of halls adjoined to Chetham's school of Music and together they are the oldest complete buildings in Manchester. The date back to the 1400's and were originally built to house the clergy from the nearby Collegiate church.

Eventually, the buildings came under the care of local merchant Humphrey Chetham who transformed them into the library and a charity school for poor boys. The library is among the oldest bublic libraries in the English-speaking world and is also Manchester's oldest.

Its shelves are filled with ancient-looking leather-bound volumes and some of them were read by Friedrich Engels and the library is the meeting place he and Karl Marx would use when Marx visited Manchester.