The trustees of the Octavia Hill Birthplace Museum are disposing of its Harry Simpson Memorial Library in September, next month. The collection comprises the largest discrete library dedicated to housing and planning. The museum is located in Wisbech in the north of Cambridgeshire.
If your institution may be interested to receive the whole collection please get in touch as soon as possible. If you may be in a position to contribute to sharing costs to store the library short-term prior to a longer-term initiative, please get in touch to discuss.
Please see below for further information.
David Mountain
david.mountain@manchester.ac.uk
The ‘Harry Simpson Memorial Library’ was established in 1996 as the ‘first library at an educational establishment devoted solely to housing’.
It was housed at the University of Westminster, but this arrangement ended when funding from the Chartered Institute of Housing stopped in 2005.
At that point, the library moved to the premises of a very small museum in Cambridgeshire, where it remains.
The library consists of some 8,000 volumes related to housing, planning, and architecture, and is an amalgamation of the former libraries of organisations including the Housing Centre Trust (now the RTPI), the London Regional Library of the Housing Corporation (now Homes England), the Building Research Station (now BRE), the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the National Federation of Housing Associations (now NHF), and the CIH.
The museum in Cambridgeshire is not in a position to store the collection in perpetuity, and have given notice that if a solution isn’t found, it will be disposed of.
More context is available via https://davemnt.wordpress.com/2026/03/26/a-homeless-library-the-library-of-the-housing-crisis/
Since the above article was written, a full electronic listing has been uncovered. An approximate box list is also available. The library is catalogued in Dewey Decimal. The museum is willing to assist with moving the library.
The British Library and the National Archives are aware and are unable to directly assist.
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