In July 1931 a new library was opened on Barnsley Road, by the West Riding County Council. According to a Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer report from Saturday the 25th of July 1931 the new library cost £656 and had the capacity for over 2,000 books. Until it’s opening books were borrowed by local residents from a room based at the Moorthorpe Technical Institute on Mellwood Lane (today Barnsley Road), but demand was so high that the West Riding County Council realised that a first of it’s kind new facility needed to be constructed. Lady Mabel Smith oversaw the opening and, as per the Eckington, Woodhouse and Staveley Express of Saturday 1st August 1931, the building was wooden construction, on a foundation of red brick. The Moorthorpe Technical Institute was located beside the police station, to its western side. The library building was constructed behind the technical institute, to it’s west. The Ordnance Survey map below shows the location of the police station at the time, for reference.

As per a Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer article from Saturday the 25th of July 1931 Mr P Keenan was appointed as the building’s first Librarian and Miss T Roebuck was his Assistant Librarian. Such was demand that whilst based at the Technical Institute it was not uncommon for all of the 900 books on offer to be distributed in one evening! At the first annual meeting of the Moorthorpe Library Committee, as reported in the Sheffield Independent of Saturday 30th July 1932, a staggering total of 59,284 books were borrowed in the first year!

So beloved was Moorthorpe’s library that on the 15th of June 1939 the Leeds Mercury reported that there was a “storm of protest” at the actions of West Riding County Council in closing the library, due to the long term illness and resignation of the Librarian. On Friday the 30th of June, after a month of closure, the Sheffield Evening Telegraph noted that the decision had been taken to reopen the branch, though Chief Librarian Miss Overbury refused local councillors to blame the West Riding County Council for the dispute.

In 1966 West Riding County Council decided that a new modern library should be opened to serve the people of South Kirkby, Moorthorpe and South Elmsall and, as per a South Yorkshire Times and Mexborough and Swinton Times article from Saturday 31st December 1966, this cost around £30,000. The new West Riding County Library was opened by Councillor Peter Hentry. The site chosen for Moorthorpe’s replacement library was not all that far from it’s existing site on Barnsley Road, but right at the edge of the boundary between South Elmsall and Moorthorpe. The below Ordnance Survey map of 1948 shows just how close the old library beside the Moorthorpe Technical Institute and the new site beside the site of the picture palace were.

The geography of the location of the new library is important to be aware of. Most residents of South Elmsall will be familiar with the site of the former Asda supermarket, on the corner of Exchange Street and Barnsley Road, with the building now being Home Bargains. This is where the Picture Palace was formerly sited, before the building of the Asda building. The replacement West Riding County Library was built on land directly beside this, and this is where it still stands today, though now known as South Elmsall Library. Today the library is flanked to the west by Aldi, on the site of the former Central Fire Station, of Moorthorpe. So, South Elmsall Library, like the building it replaced, is (and always has been) located inside the boundary of the village of Moorthorpe, not in South Elmsall at all!

The former wooden library building continued to be used for other means, until 1988, when arsonists burned it to the ground. Very few images of the lost library exist, sadly, and we welcome residents who may have such images to contact us. The Moorthorpe Technical Institute similarly has been demolished, but the location of the buildings is still lovingly referred to as the “library fields” by local residents.

West Riding County Council are to be responsible for this strange error, as advertisements for new staff placed in newspapers in 1966, such as one from the South Yorkshire Times and Mexborough and Swinton Times on Saturday 4th June 1966, show that this was indeed down to the County Council not knowing the local boundaries. Despite this, a letter written by a local resident published in the South Yorkshire Times and Mexborough and Swinton Times, on Saturday the 25th March 1967, makes clear that locals still considered the new library to belong to Moorthorpe. This error was not corrected by Wakefield Metropolitan District Council, who were established on the 1st of April 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972, since they became custodians of the building. Would it be fair to say then, that South Elmsall stole Moorthorpe’s library? Well, no. But it is an embarrassing faux pas that has yet to be corrected!