National Library of Wales

The National Library of Wales stands in Aberystwyth, a coastal town in Ceredigion. It is the largest library in Wales, holding over six and a half million books and periodicals. The library also preserves the largest collections of archives, portraits, maps and photographic images in Wales. Welsh manuscripts form a national collection here, alongside the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales. Paintings and topographical prints are also held in the most comprehensive collection in the country. The library serves as the primary research library and archive in Wales and is one of the largest in the United Kingdom. The library’s origins trace back to a 19th-century committee tasked with collecting Welsh material. In 1905, David Lloyd George supported its establishment in Aberystwyth, and Sir John Williams donated his Peniarth manuscript collection and £20,000 towards the building. Over 110,000 working-class subscribers contributed to its foundation, unusual for such institutions at the time. The library was established by Royal Charter in 1907 and granted legal deposit privileges in 1911. It was the first British library to use the Library of Congress Classification in 1913. The building itself, designed by Sidney Greenslade and later expanded by Charles Holden, is a Grade II* listed structure faced with Portland stone and Cornish granite. The North Reading Room, 175 feet long and 33 feet high, resembles a Gothic cathedral with galleries at three levels. The South Reading Room now houses the Wales Broadcast Archive Centre, containing programmes from Welsh broadcasters dating back to the 1920s. The library includes a six-storey bookstack completed in 1931, a second bookstack opened in 1982, and a third building doubling storage capacity in 1996. During the Second World War, the library provided a heated tunnel refuge for priceless artworks and manuscripts evacuated from major institutions.