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Downside houses
the largest library in the West of England after
that at Longleat. It is a living collection, growing
at the rate of about 2000 books a year. With more
than 150,000 books, it contains over 50 mediaeval
manuscripts, 183 incunables (books published before
1500) and over 200 bound journals.
The strength
of the collection lies on those areas characteristic
of the principal fields of monastic theology, Scripture,
Patristics, Liturgy and Church History. Dogmatics
and Moral theology are less well represented apart
from major writers. As a specialist library it
has an unrivalled collection of Recusant literature,
with many Seventeenth Century manuscript works
of devotion and polemic, and lecture notes of university
theological courses. The library also houses a
number of collections bequeathed to us, including
those of Edmund Bishop, close friend of Aidan Gasquet
and a specialist in antiquarian liturgy, Archbishop
David Mathew, historian of the Stuart period, David
Rogers, who assembled one of the finest collections
of early editions of the works of St Francis de
Sales, and Joseph Gillow, the bibliographer of
Recusancy especially in Lancashire. Teignmouth
Abbey, the successor monastery to the community
of nuns established in the Sixteenth Century in
Dunkirk, presented us with the greater part of
their library, and Sir Francis Cruise with his
enormous collection of copies of The Imitation
of Christ. More unusual are the Gatty collection
on sundials, the Hartung collection of ornithology,
and sizeable collections of Bibliography, Byzantine
studies, and Somerset local history.
The Library is
available to visitors, who are welcome to stay
in the Guest House, and is rarely without researchers
who come from all parts of the world.
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