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Bedales School Memorial Library's 90th Anniversary

By Jane Kirby, Bedales Librarian and Archivist

The Memorial Library was officially opened at the end of the Summer Term 1921, so we are celebrating its 90th birthday in 2011.  Coincidentally, in the Autumn of 2010 we heard that the Library was to benefit from a legacy of £5000 left by John Webster, an OB.  This enabled us to ask students and staff how we should best mark the anniversary.
Everyone was given the chance to suggest suitable projects and then vote on the suggestions, and the two most popular ideas were to restore the Globe and some of the woodwork that had been damaged when the roof leaked.

The globe was donated to the School in 1959 by the former Headmaster Hector Jacks and his wife Mary.  Unfortunately, over the years, the map has started to peel away and it is now looking rather sorry for itself.  Expensive though the restoration will be, it will still leave us some money to start on the re-polishing of the woodwork that was damaged by water ingress before the roof was repaired. The Globe has now been shipped to Scotland for restoration and during the Easter holidays the first area of woodwork was restored by a specialist French polisher.  The photos beow show what the beam and memorial panel looked like before and after the work.  We were also able to have two large tables repolished.

 
Before                                               After

 
Before                                           After

Continuing the theme of repair and restoration we try to get the rush seats of a few Library chairs redone every year.  This year our expert restorer has been tied up with family matters and so we have got a bit of a backlog now. I was fortunate enough to be able to join a course at West Dean College to learn the technique myself, under a new initiative to offer staff the chance to broaden their skills by learning things not directly related to their day jobs.  I very much hope to pass on this knowledge to students over the next Badley weekend, by running a workshop reseating as many chairs as we can.  The next step is to become fully self sufficient by growing the rushes in the lake!

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