Gravesend’s historic library is undergoing a £2.5m renovation to make it one of the best in Kent. Library manager Christoph Bull told reporter MICHAEL PURTON about the project.

OPENED in 1905, Gravesend Library’s Carnegie building in Windmill Street has become a landmark of the town centre, but after 105 years of service it is in need of a facelift, so a makeover is underway.

As Christoph Bull, the district manager of Gravesham and Dartford libraries, stands on the library site it seems as though Gravesend has been transported back to its bomb ravaged days of the Second World War.

The Carnegie building, named after the millionaire who first funded it in 1904, is covered in scaffolding, and there is a hole next door where the reference library once stood, as it was demolished earlier this summer.

But by June next year this hole will be filled with a top-of-the-range structure housing new computers and books, and the Carnegie building will once again be the pride of the town centre.

Mr Bull said: “The new library will be one of the best in the county, and will be just as much a community centre as a library.”

The two and three-storey buildings will include a community room which can be hired out, a room for teenagers, a place to register births and deaths, a reading garden, and of course lots of books.

There will also be a changing room with showers for adults who live in sheltered or assisted living accommodation, which they will be able to register to use.

Mr Bull said: “It will be for adults who would normally not be able to come into town due to the lack of public toilets. We’ve included this as we want to make everyone feel they can use the library.”

Although the new library will embrace the modern world, the Carnegie building’s Edwardian charms are being restored, including a table and five chairs which have been at the library since 1905.

The transformation has already benefitted Gravesend’s collection of artefacts, as workmen found a bottle and measuring bowl from the 18th century while digging.

Both will be displayed in the new library, which Mr Bull says will “combine the traditional with the new to create a place we hope will become a busy community hub”.

Mr Bull is a walking encyclopedia of Gravesend’s history, but with such a magnificent new library on the horizon, he is currently revelling in looking to the future.

Mr Bull says the new community room will be named after either Alex J Philip, who was librarian when the library opened in 1905, or Robert Pocock, Gravesend’s first historian.

Mr Philip (1879 - 1955) secured material for the library’s archive and pioneered the reservation system by encouraging other libraries in the south east to loan each other books requested by readers.

Mr Pocock (1760 - 1830) introduced the printing press to Gravesend in 1786 and ran his own library from his house and stationery shop in High Street.