Ernest Gimson and Andrew Carnegie

You may be wondering why I am writing a blogpost about Ernest Gimson and Andrew Carnegie, and what on earth these two people might have had in common. 

Both questions are easy enough to answer, but let's start with the latter!

Andrew Carnegie died on August 11th 1919: Ernest Gimson died on August 12th 1919. Thus, August 11-12 is the centenary of the deaths of Gimson and Carnegie, both of whom have a strong connection to our area.

As a librarian by day, and a customer of libraries for the past 55 years, the name Andrew Carnegie has been familiar to me for most of my life. However, it wasn't until I did my Leicestershire your guide training in 2012-2013, and on our exam walk one of my fellow tour guides mentioned our public library, and that he himself had been awarded a Carnegie Scholarship to study at university, that I started to wonder about Carnegie, the man and the frequency with which his name seemed to appear.

So, Carnegie, born in Scotland in 1835, emigrated to the United States with his family when he was in his very early teens. He began working as a bobbin boy in a cotton mill, followed by a stint as a telegraph messenger, then telegraph operator, then superintendent with part of the Pennsylvania railroad. With his steady job, Carnegie was able to trade in shares, and to cut an enormously long story short, he made a very large fortune in the US steel industry. At one time, Carnegie was allegedly the richest man in the US, but, of course, by the time he died he had given away much of his fortune.  

Probably one of the most familiar things associated with Andrew Carnegie are the many public libraries in the UK that bear his name, which includes Loughborough's own! Ours was designed by local architects Barrowcliffe and Allcock, was constructed in 1903-5 and, like many others, is a listed building. I think the first library in Loughborough was a subscription library down on Baxter Gate, which was only available to those who could afford to pay the subscription. The first free public library was on the corner of Ashby Road and Green Close Lane.

Carnegie's connection with these libraries is that he donated some, if not all of the money towards the cost of the buildings. Seems like the idea of match funding has been around far longer than the Heritage Lottery Fund, since Carnegie would only donate the building costs as long as the local authority paid to equip the building and for maintenance costs.  It's possible that Carnegie's strong feeling about the education and welfare of less fortunate children was influenced by his own experience, particularly when Colonel James Anderson made his own personal library available once a week to working boys. 

Not only did Carnegie donate money to the building of libraries - in the UK and the US - he also funded a range of other buildings, like museums (e.g. the Melton [Mowbray] Carnegie Museum), concert halls (e.g. the Carnegie Hall in New York), educational institutions like Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, the Carnegie educational scholarship as mentioned above, and the Carnegie Medal for children's literature in the UK.

Some Carnegie libraries in the UK are now under threat, as council budgets contract, for example in Abergavenny where a recent plan was to erect a mezzanine level in the market hall for use as a library, while other libraries are being renovated (like Harrogate public library) while others remain as they are, like ours.

Kendal Carnegie Library

Loughborough Carnegie Library

Moving on to Ernest Gimson, we find that he was born in Leicester, son of Josiah Gimson, the engineer and iron founder who owned the Gimson Engineering Company which in turn owned the Vulcan Works. Ernest Gimson was in training to be an architect with the well-known Leicester architect, Isaac Barradale, when he heard William Morris, a leader in the arts and crafts movement, deliver a lecture at the Secular Hall in Leicester. So influenced was he that Gimson moved to London to work as an architect and designer, following Morris's ethos. 

Together with his friends and colleagues, the Barnsley brothers, Gimson moved to Gloucestershire where they worked until Gimson's death in 1919. During his lifetime, Gimson built three homes for his close relatives in Leicestershire, one of which became a home for Donald Gimson, and is our local Stoneywell Cottage, up at Ulverscroft. It's now run by the National Trust and really worth a visit. It's a lovely cottage, full of arts and crafts furniture and decoration, with lots of local slate.          

And there I must leave you for the week!

Below are some useful and interesting websites with more information:

Andrew Carnegie: pioneer, visionary, innovator.

Restoration of Harrogate public library, 2019 and before restoration. 

Statutory Listing for Harrogate public library

Listing for Abergavenny public library

One proposal for a replacement library for Abergavenny (the Morrisons store has been built but not the library: there have been other proposals which include creating a mezzanine floor in the market hall to house the library, but the link is not currently working).

You are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follow:

Dyer, Lynne (2019). Ernest Gimson and Andrew Carnegie. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2019/08/ernest-gimson-and-andrew-carnegie.html [Accessed 11 August 2019]

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Lynne