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Writer's pictureLondon On The Ground

King’s College London’s Maughan Library reveals its secrets

The site’s 800 year history includes housing Jews converted to Christianity, and legal and national records.

The Maughan Library’s Round Reading Room

During London Open House Festival in September, I had a chance to look inside this fascinating building on Chancery Lane.

 

Walks available for booking

For a schedule of forthcoming London On The Ground guided walks, please click here.

 

Perhaps the most striking feature of the Maughan Library, and not usually visible to the public, is the Round Reading Room. It was inspired by the similarly titled room at the British Museum. However, the Maughan’s version is a dodecagon (12 sided), whereas the British Museum's is circular in plan.

The Round Reading Room

The Maughan’s Round Reading Room was added when the building was the Public Record Office in 1863 and was known as the Literary Research Room. Its domed ceiling is made from zinc - chosen for its fireproof qualities - painted to look like wood.

The Round Reading Room's domed ceiling

A second painted zinc ceiling can be seen above the entrance lobby, decorated with motifs of Tudor roses and fleur-de-lys. This late 19th century ceiling cost £407, or £60,000 in 2024 money.

The painted zinc ceiling above the entrance lobby

The Maughan’s Victorian zinc ceilings are believed to be the only two of their kind in the UK.

The first building recorded on this site was the ‘House of the Converts’, or Domus Conversorum, established here in 1232 by Henry III. This provided a home and a low wage to Jews who had converted to Christianity, who were required to surrender their possessions to the Crown.

Just 58 years later, in 1290, Edward I expelled all Jews from England at very short notice; only those who converted were allowed to remain. The Master of the Rolls became warden of the Domus Conversorum and its chapel became known as the Rolls Chapel.


The Master of the Rolls was originally a clerk tasked with keeping the records, or ‘rolls’, of the Court of Chancery. The position evolved to become the second most senior judge in England and Wales (after the Lord Chief Justice).

By the 14th century, the site also included lodgings for the Master of the Rolls and an office to store the records of the Court of Chancery.

In 1895 the by now unstable chapel building was demolished.

However, the site – known as the Rolls Estate – continued to play an important role in keeping records. The building that still stands on the site today was constructed between 1856 and 1898 as the Public Record Office.

It housed a vast array of national documents, including the Domesday Book and Magna Carta. Built to be very strong and fireproof, it was dubbed ‘the strong box of the Empire’,

In 1998, the Rolls Estate was sold by the Crown Commissioners to King’s College London, who restored it and adapted it for use as its main research library. It was the largest new university library since World War II.

The Maughan Library from Chancery Lane

Named in honour of King’s College alumnus and businessman Sir Deryck Maughan, who gave money to help fund the project, it was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 2002.

The building's Gothic revival style exterior contains more than one type and colour of stone. Architect Sir James Pennethorne had to switch stones when quarries closed during more than four decades of construction.

Spot the different stone types

The clock tower’s original purpose, when added in 1865, was to house a water tank.

Inside the building, the Weston Room contains a number of features preserved from the medieval chapel of the Masters of the Rolls. These include funerary monuments from the 16th and 17th centuries, stained glass windows and a tessellated mosaic floor from c.1900.

The 300 or more rooms in which documents were stored when the building was the Public Record Office were known as cells. Each 90 ton cell had grid floors of cast iron, and slate shelves in cast iron frames, and was 25 feet high.

A door to a cell

The decorative doors to the cells weighed more than half a ton. A number of doors and cells have been preserved.

The building contains an impressive staircase, illuminated with natural light through a skylight above it.

Glass pavement tiles in each floor helped to spread natural light through the building in the days when electric lighting was minimal.

Decorated doors and glass floor tiles

In the courtyard, behind a bicycle shed, a single arch mounted into the wall is all that remains from the medieval chapel.

The arch from the medieval Rolls Chapel

On the east side of the bicycle shed is a series of six figurative reliefs of the continents. They were removed here from St Dunstan’s House, a building that stood in Fetter Lane from 1886 to 1976.

Plaques representing the continents

These late 19th century decorative plasterwork plaques represent America, Australasia, Europe, Africa, India and Canada. They are attributed to Walter Crane, an artist of the Arts and Crafts movement best known as an illustrator of children’s books.

The Maughan Library’s Round Reading Room featured in the Dan Brown novel The Da Vinci Code. It certainly has an enigmatic, almost secretive, atmosphere.


London Open House Festival provided a great opportunity for the library to share some of its historic and architectural secrets with the public.

 

Walks available for booking

For a schedule of forthcoming London On The Ground guided walks, please click here.

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