Tuesday 7 September 2010

Rooms with books


The library at Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire.  From the card:
The Library was built by 1730 to house Lord Harley's great collection of books, prints and pamphlets, which later formed the nucleus of the British Museum Library.

The Book Room, again in Wimpole Hall.  From the card:
The Book Room was designed by Sir John Soane about 1806 to accommodate the overflow of books from the Library built for Lord Harley 80 years before.
Two more rooms full of books.  These ones are less ornate than many and the second at least gives the impression that it might actually have been used, more a real room with books than a museum-like library.

The  name "Book Room" reminds me of my father.  My parents moved house soon after I started university so I had in effect left home.  It meant there was rather more space in the house so one room was set aside for my father's books and hobbies.  He couldn't decide what to call it - study was too studious, library was far too formal, book room was nearly there but sounded a little as though it might be the room where you did the accounts or cooked the books.  It became the stookary.  From that time on he always had a stookary even though they moved house at least twice more, and "stookary" has become a word well-known and used in our family.

5 comments:

  1. Very impressive place!! Never heard the word
    "stookary" but, then, you Brits do have a lot of words in your language that I've not heard in the English we use on this side of the pond!!

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  2. We do have odd words, true, but this one is odder than any and made up by my father. He did a lot of that sort of thing. STudy - bOOK room - librARY.

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  3. I've just been reading the wiki page, Wimpole Hall looks fantastic. I'd love to have a book room in my house :-)

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  4. I love books, books, books, and any library or book room or stookary is heaven on earth! thanks.
    from eternal bookworm

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