Drive west from Plymouth across the Tamar Bridge, and be ready with the brake pedal, for Saltash is situated about two seconds into Cornwall. A beautiful spot, it hangs high above the river, the fabulous views taking in hills as deftly infolded as the sibilance in a line of verse by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
In this part of the country the visitor knows to expect a Smugglers Inn or a thatched Tea Shoppe round every corner. What we do not expect is a Saltash Library, whose double-height glass frontage and swept-up aerofoil roof on curved and columnar concrete are the closest match to Le Corbusier in these isles. Designed by Royston Summers and opened in 1962, it was thought by Pevsner “one of the most innovative of the County Architect’s post-war oeuvre”. Two or three years later, when The Times invited members of the public to nominate the best post-1940s building for an award, Saltash Library was runner-up. Poignantly, it was later revealed that the recommendation had been submitted by the architect’s mother-in-law, Mrs F. Forster. Good on you, Mrs F.
A proposed housing development of sympathetic character, with the library at its centre, never happened. This is a shame, as the library now has a washed-up, beached appearance, looking more a relic of its time than organic member of sustained development. I am reminded of another cutting-edge project from the same era, the magnificent Princess passenger flying boat I used to see in the early 1960s, parked in a Cowes shipyard before it was towed away and broken up, one more valiant prototype for a future that never materialised.
We hear from time to time of proposals that the library service in Cornwall be privatised, or its libraries sold or closed, or turned over to the community. Cornwall has particular problems in this area, due in part to its geography of dispersed communities, in part the high proportion of low-income workers, in part its tourist economy that brings holiday-makers and second-home owners funnelling into the county in summer like ducks driven in to the tapering net of a wildfowler’s decoy trap. It also happens to be the largest unitary authority in the UK, one of only two with a population of more than half a million. The result is library demands that are out of kilter with funding, and it is hard to see how a long-term solution can be supported at local level. The best fix would be a much-needed national strategy that would see problematic services such as Cornwall’s as the earliest beneficiaries.
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This is extracted from An English Library Journey, a new title due out in May 2022. Further details to be announced on this website.