The building Barry Hackett refers to, the wooden library, was there at least 70 years ago. I remember my sisters taking me there. You had to be very quiet and the pictures and colours of the books in the children's section fascinated me. You had to join but it was very cheap. I had never seen so many books even though we did have books at home. I still use a library now though not as often.Wonderful institutions.

In the light of the current threats to libraries for financial reasons, the children’s author Jacqueline Wilson has been on TV discussing her books and it reminded me of the pleasure that I gained from the library during the 1950s, when my family lived at the Circle. I don’t know when the Circle library was built, but in those days the nearest library was somewhere in Wrythe Lane, I don’t recall exactly where, but I used to cycle there. Lorna Hill was far and away my favourite author. To a child living on an LCC housing estate in the South East, the stories of middle-class children in Northumberland riding their ponies over the moors, holding tennis parties, and going to the Saddlers’ Ballet School were an insight into another world. One of Mazo de la Roche’s novels, I think it was Jalna, was televised, and this lead me to find a whole series of novels about the Canadian family whose home Jalna was, again setting the imagination flying

About 70 years ago the library was a wooden hut which was at the end of Winchcombe Road opposite the Tudor, which was a paper shop/post office. To join the library you had to get a blue card from school and get it signed by your parents. You were allowed one fiction and two non-fiction and as a desperately keen reader i always finished the books long before I was allowed to exchange them. The shed doubled up as a Welfare place where mothers got their children weighed and they could collect their dried milk, cod liver oil and orange juice. I loved that shed 'cause I loved all the books.