C18th volumes presented to King's
29 Nov 2002, PR 54/02 The Master of the Rolls, the Right Honourable The Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, will present the College with the Rolls Chapel copies of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer today Friday 29 November. These two magnificent 18th century volumes will be presented by Lord Philips at the beginning of the conference on Law, Government, and the Public Records, organised by Professor Anne Duggan of the Department of History, in the former Rolls Chapel (now renamed the Weston Room following a donation from the Garfield Weston Foundation) of the Maughan Library.
Professor Duggan, Dr David Ricks, Head of the School of Humanities, Vivien Robertson, Site Services Manager for the Maughan Library, and Katie Sambrook, Special Collections Librarian, will receive them on behalf of King's. It is intended that they will be exhibited from time to time in the Weston Room, their former home.
Law, Government, and the Public Records Conference
The capacity audience for the conference will include members of the Selden Society, the Public Record Office, and the Royal Courts of Law, as well as academics and students from King's and elsewhere.
Papers will be given by: Professor David Carpenter, King's Department of History, Professor Conrad Russell, Emeritus, King's Department of History, Dr John Hudson (University of St Andrews), Dr Paul Brand (All Souls College, Oxford), Dr Elizabeth Hallam Smith (Director of Public Services, Public Record Office), and Dr Geoffrey Tyack, (Director of the Stanford Centre, Oxford).
Members of the King's College London Chapel Choir, under the direction of Dr David Trendell, will perform a programme of early music, whose centrepiece is a rare performance of Guillaume Dufay's Iuvenis qui puellam - a setting of a 12th century decretal (legal) letter.Notes to editors The Maughan Library
The Library, formerly home to the Public Record Office, is a magnificent building widely regarded as a masterpiece of neo-gothic architecture. A £35 million, two-year transformation of the building into a state-of-the-art modern library and information services centre has created what is believed to be the largest new university library facility in Britain since World War II.
King's acquired the Grade II* listed building, also known as The Rolls Estate, from the Crown Commissioners in 1998. It was designed by Sir James Pennethorne and Sir John Taylor in several phases and dates from 1851. Known as 'the strong-box of the Empire', it was used to store the nation's records.
The books and journals of four of the College's ten schools: Humanities, Law, Physical Sciences & Engineering, and Social Science & Public Policy are housed within the Maughan Library which has the capacity to hold 1.4 million volumes and support 7,000 students. Over 1,250 networked reader places and approximately 26km of shelving were installed during the conversion.
The College's Special Collections and Rare Books, most of which are pre-1800, are also located within the Library in a purpose designed facility known as the Foyle Special Collections Library (in recognition of a grant from the Foyle Foundation).
The mezzanined study areas that now exist within the Library were created from self-contained cells, each 15 feet high with cast-iron grid floors and slate shelves mounted on cast-iron frames. More than 48km of heavy slate shelving was removed during building work, some of which has been used for signage around the building and in door reveals. New openings have been cut between cells, and between rooms and corridors, to ease circulation and to introduce light and a sense of space.
The Library has been named in honour of King's graduate Sir Deryck Maughan and his wife, Lady Maughan, in recognition of their generous donation to its restoration.
King's College London
King's is one of the oldest and largest colleges of the University of London with some 12,400 undergraduate students and over 4,700 postgraduates in ten schools of study. The College had 24 of its subject-areas awarded the highest rating of 5* and 5 for research quality, demonstrating excellence at an international level. It is in the top group of five universities for research earnings and has an annual turnover of over £300 million and research income from grants and contracts in excess of £90 million (2001-2002).Further informationPublic Relations Department
Email:
melanie.gardner@kcl.ac.uk
Tel: 020 7848 3073
This information is provided by the
Public Relations Department
Tel: 020-7848 3202 Fax: 020-7848 3739 Email:
pr@kcl.ac.uk
