Welcome
ÔÇ£The Durham Residential Research Library is a major new partnership between Durham University, Durham Cathedral and Ushaw College, all of which have internationally significant collections of books and other materials that deserve to be brought to a wider scholarly and public audience. By bringing together these three collections, and providing residential accommodation for visiting fellows, the DRRL intends to foster research on material held at Durham, to create an international fellowship of scholars whose research interests have brought them to us, and to showcase the collections to a wider audience.
I hope that this website provides you with the information you need to plan your own engagement with our collections, and that they inspire you to visit and work with us. I look forward to welcoming you to the DRRL or to one of its events.ÔÇØ
By Professor Janet Stewart
Executive Dean (Arts and Humanities)
History of the RRL
Since 2018 the Durham Residential Research Library has been welcoming visiting fellows to research across the three historic collections of Durham – those held by Durham Cathedral, Ushaw College and Durham University.
Durham Cathedral Library descends from the library of the monastery founded at Lindisfarne by St Aidan in 635 AD. It is the largest in situ medieval library in the UK, with manuscripts dating from the 6th century to the modern day. The cathedral itself dates from 1093.
ÔÇÿUshaw College descends from the English College at Douai, which was founded in 1568, and has been in its present location since 1808. The college houses extensive collections, including over 40,000 printed titles, the great majority pre-1851, including much rare pamphlet literature from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. ‘
ÔÇÿPalace Green Library was originally founded by Bishop John Cosin in the seventeenth century. In 1669 Bishop Cosin founded an episcopal library on Palace Green, the first public lending library in the North East of England. Following the university ‘s foundation in 1832, the site was developed with Palace Green Library serving as the university ‘s main library for 150 years before focusing on archival and special collections in the 1980s.
