Voices from the Wall at the Portico Library, Manchester

Debbie Challis writes about a public engagement project which received funding from the ICS

Think of Manchester and Romans or Greek Revival architecture is probably not what comes to mind. However, if you visit the Portico Library over the next 6 weeks you can see and find out about both. Voices from the Wall is a display based on an innovative creative writing project created and curated by Bronwen Riley on Dacians and Romanians in Britain. It explores shared histories and experiences between Britain and Romania, which began nearly two millennia ago with the building of Hadrian’s Wall and continues today.

The display has come to the Portico Library in Manchester from Birdoswald (English Heritage) on Hadrian’s Wall near Carlisle and is displayed as part of a larger exhibition that explores the history and future of the library. The library is built in Greek Revival style, designed by Chester based architect Thomas Harrison, and opened in 1806 as an early example of a classical civic building in Manchester. It is a nod to the democratic principles and quest for knowledge as well as trade associated with Ancient Greece that was so influential in the early 1800s.

However, in the early to mid-1800s only 400 men who had enough wealth to buy shares in the institution were members of the Portico Library. Their wealth, mainly made in the Cotton City, was often from the work of enslaved people in the Caribbean and USA as well as the underpaid workers in the city and surrounding area. The timeline and other information in Under Construction shares this information and asks you to examine the building and features of the Portico by touch, feeling and thinking with a view to feeding into plans for the future. This is the opening of our consultation phase for Reuniting the Portico Library our ambitious capital project funded by the National Heritage Lottery Fund in which we want to unify the library again within its full Greek temple structure.

Under Construction is not just about the building but also about books and how we read them and how people can be read by them; whether at school, leisure or searching for our own past and that of the environment around us. The Portico Library’s collection comprises 25,000 books, mainly from the long nineteenth century, with a large section on both global travel and the North West of England (from Cheshire to Carlisle). When Apapat (the Portico’s Exhibition Co-ordinator) and I visited Voices from the Wall in the Romanian Consulate in Manchester, when it was briefly there in May, we were struck by how it engagingly told a story of Romans and Romanians in the past and today in a way that fitted the vision and values of the Portico. It also gave us a chance to put some of our books on display that tied the exhibition to our collection.

Bronwen Riley has said “This exhibition explores through history, stories and archaeology the lives of the Dacian soldiers who helped to build Hadrian’s Wall and the fascinating parallels with the lives of Romanians living in the north of England today,” There are now around 1 million Romanians living in the UK - most arriving in Britain in the past 20 years. But the earliest group of ‘Romanians’ to live and work here arrived more than 1900 years ago, as part of the Roman army, and were known as Dacians. Dacian soldiers were stationed on Hadrian’s Wall for centuries. As part of the project Bronwen has held creative writing sessions for British-Romanian children and adults in the North West and the exhibition incorporates their voices.

It gives the Portico a chance to put a few of our historic books on display – both on Roman Britain and visitors to Romania - and contextualises them within ancient history and the lived experience of the Romanian community in the UK. It is a particular joy to put our newly adopted (and so conserved) book The Roman Wall (1867) by John Collingwood Bruce open at the page on Dacians at Birdoswald. We have also opened out a map of Mancunium from a rare book on Roman Lancashire (1883) by William Thompson Watkin in which you can see how making the industrial city – building canals and railways – brought to light Manchester’s Roman past. Also displayed is an early account by Adam Neale of travels to Moldavia from 1818, showing a beautiful colour illustration on display and Emily Gerard’s The land beyond the forest (1888). Gerard’s book is the first English book to use the word nosferatu to describe a vampire and influenced Bram Stoker in his writing of Dracula. We are delighted that Voices from the Wall can be displayed and used to help consider the role of the Portico Library and its collections in understanding identity.

Join us on 23 November for a Creative Writing workshop in the morning 11-1pm – aimed at adults – and a Family Workshop in the afternoon 2-4pm: https://www.theportico.org.uk/event-calendar

Voices from the Wall is on display until 19 December 2024.

The project is run in partnership with the Romanian Cultural Institute in London, with funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund and Arts Council England and the Institute of Classical Studies.