Treasure-trove of history books to go on display in Thornbury

The Vic Hallet Library was launched in the town recently and includes up to 1,500 non-fiction books.

The books were bequeathed to the town’s museum by Vic Hallet after he died several years ago. Mr Hallet was a former curator of Thornbury Museum and a member of the Thornbury U3A, University of the Third Age.

The 1,500 books are in excellent condition and cover a wide range of topics including archaeology, history, aeronautics, social history, jazz, art, architecture, buildings, monuments, geology and etymology.

"What you are looking at is a lifetime accumulation of books. He was a very active person with a variety of organisations," said Paul Wildgoose, chairman of the library.

"They were left to the museum but a committee of people from the museum and the U3A have launched this library."

The library is not set to formally open until Wednesday, July 6 but a special preview was held recently in the town hall to show local people what is available.

Once the library is up and running, members of the public will be able to borrow the books.

However, despite the support of Thornbury Town Council, which has allowed the library to use the exhibition room in the town hall on an experimental basis, the collection is so large it has already outgrown its new home.

"This is just the start. The problem with books is they tend to accumulate. At the moment we are only able to display about half of what we have, which is a shame because you won’t get this sort of collection of reference book outside of a university," said Mr Wildgoose.

The Vic Hallet Library will be open in the exhibition room in Thornbury Town Hall every Wednesday (10am-1pm) and Friday (1-4pm) from July 6.

Anyone who would like to get involved in the library or perhaps would like to volunteer a permanent home for the collection can contact Synthia Black on 01454 412641.