# The Portico Library

The Portico Library, The Portico or Portico Library and Gallery on Mosley Street in Manchester, England, is an independent subscription library designed in the Greek Revival style by Thomas Harrison of Chester and built between 1802 and 1806. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a Grade II* listed building, having been designated on 25 February 1952, and has been described as "the most refined little building in Manchester".

## History

The library was established as a result of a meeting of Manchester businessmen in 1802 which resolved to found an "institute uniting the advantages of a newsroom and a library". A visit by four of the men to the Athenaeum in Liverpool inspired them to achieve a similar institution in Manchester. Money was raised through 400 subscriptions from Manchester men and the library opened in 1806.
The library, mainly focused on 19th-century literature, was designed by Thomas Harrison, architect of Liverpool's Lyceum and built by one of the founders, David Bellhouse. Its first secretary, Peter Mark Roget, began his thesaurus here.
Today the ground floor is tenanted by The Bank, a public house that takes its name from the Bank of Athens that leased the property in 1921. The library occupies what became the first floor with its entrance on Charlotte Street.
In November 2023, it was announced that the library had been awarded a £453,000 grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to transform the building and preserve its book collection. The regeneration project would aim to unite all three original floors of the building for the first time in more than 100 years. The ground floor and basement would be changed to a "northern bookshop" with educational activities, dining and exhibition areas and meeting spaces, while the upper floors would showcase the library's unique book collection, manuscript archive and architecture.

## Architecture

The library was the first Greek Revival building in the city. Its interior was inspired by John Soane. The library has a rectangular plan and is constructed in sandstone ashlar on a corner site at 57 Mosley Street. It has two storeys, a basement and roof space. Its façade on Mosley Street has a three-bay pedimented loggia with four Ionic columns set slightly forward and steps between the columns. Under the loggia are two entrance doors and three square windows at first floor level.
The Charlotte Street façade has an entrance into the loggia with a square window above and another on the first floor. A five-bay colonnade of Ionic semi-columns has tall sashed windows on the ground floor in each bay and square window above at first floor level. The attic storey is behind a pilastered parapet. Originally the reading room was on the ground floor and the library occupied the remainder of the ground floor and a mezzanine gallery. A glass-domed ceiling was inserted at gallery level in about 1920 to separate the new tenants from what remained of the library.

## Prizes

The Portico Library, in conjunction with its cultural partners and funders, hosts a series of literary prizes throughout the year to celebrate writers and poets from Northern England and beyond. The Portico Prize for Literature was established in 1985 and awarded biennially to a work of fiction or poetry and a work of non-fiction set wholly or mainly in the north of England. The library launched the Sadie Massey Award to celebrate the North West's young writers in 2015.

### Recipients

2010s :
| Year | Winner(s) | Shortlist |
| 2010 | Fiction: How to Paint a Dead Man, Sarah Hall Non-fiction: The Plot: A Biography of an English Acre, Madeleine Bunting | |
| 2012 | Fiction: The Beautiful Indifference: Stories, Sarah Hall | She's Leaving Home, Joan Bakewell The Doll Princess, Tom Benn Ragnarok: The End of the Gods, A. S. Byatt The Hunger Trace, Edward Hogan The Last Word, Mark Illis Reality, Reality, Jackie Kay The Retribution, Val McDermid The Testament of Jessie Lamb, Jane Rogers The Adult, Joe Stretch Hungry, The Stars and Everything, Emma Jane Unsworth The Visiting Angel, Paul Wilson How the Trouble Started, Robert Williams |
| 2012 | Non-fiction: Strands: A Year of Discoveries on the Beach, Jean Sprackland | Walking Home, Simon Armitage William Armstrong, Magician of the North, Henrietta Heald Nella Last in the 1950s, Robert and Patricia Malcolmson Jack's Yak, Keith Richardson Brief Lives: Elizabeth Gaskell, Alan Shelston The Man Who Couldn't Stop Drawling, Chris Wadsworth Jews and Other Foreigners, Bill Williams Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?, Jeanette Winterson Ralph Tailor's Summer: A Scrivener, his City and the Plague, Keith Wrightson |
| 2015 | Fiction: Beastings, Benjamin Myers | Boneland, Alan Garner Her Birth, Rebecca Goss Terror, Toby Martinez de las Rivas Two Countries, Katrina Porteous Drysalter, Michael Symmons Roberts |
| 2015 | Non-fiction: The Valley, Richard Benson | Common Ground, Rob Cowen A Shepherd's Life, James Rebanks The Last Act of Love, Cathy Rentzenbrink The Pinecone, Jenny Uglow |
2020s :
| Year | Winner(s) | Shortlist | Ref |
| 2020 | Saltwater, Jessica Andrews | Ironopolis, Glen James Brown The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness, Graham Caveney Under the Rock: The Poetry of a Place, Benjamin Myers The Mating Habit of Stags, Ray Robinson Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile, Adelle Stripe | |
| 2022 | Toto Among the Murderers, Sally J Morgan | Ghosted, Jenn Ashworth The Outsiders, James Corbett The Family Tree, Sairish Hussain Sea State, Tabitha Lasley Mayflies, Andrew O'Hagan | |

## Notable members

The library's first chairman was John Ferriar and its secretary was Peter Mark Roget. Other notable members include John Dalton, Reverend William Gaskell, Sir Robert Peel and more recently Eric Cantona.

## Gallery

* The main room
* Reading room
* Reading area