Light the Old Library

Restore the Old Library's reading room — new lighting, conservation of the 1580s window and digitisation of our medieval manuscripts for the world to read.

The Old Library is the oldest room in Wrenfield still in daily use. Students have read beneath its oak roof since 1497. But its lighting dates from the 1970s, its great west window needs urgent conservation, and our most precious manuscripts can only be seen by a handful of scholars each year.

Light the Old Library will change that. We'll install gentle, conservation-grade lighting so the room can stay open into the evening, restore the stained glass of the west window, and digitise our 42 medieval manuscripts so anyone, anywhere, can turn their pages online.

Give a little light. Five hundred years of readers will thank you.

Impact levels:

• £20 — Digitises ten pages of a medieval manuscript

• £50 — A conservation box for a fragile early printed book

• £150 — One new reading lamp at a desk in the Old Library

• £500 — Conserves one pane of the 1580s west window

• £1,462 — Adopt a manuscript — your name in its online record forever