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Our Story
This is the story of how a community rescued its library
The community re-opened Kensal Rise Library on September 27th 2019, eight years after the library was closed by cuts - and exactly 119 years after it was originally opened by American writer, Mark Twain.
We had campaigned against closure for years, even taking the Council to the High Court. The Council closed the library anyway, despite mass protest and national - and international! -media coverage.
We continued to fight to regain what had become a void building from the freeholder and developer. Against the odds, we eventually won back most of the ground floor, which otherwise would have been out of community hands forever.
We then raised hundreds of thousands of pounds from donations, fundraising events and grants to refurbish and equip what had become an empty shell - creating the beautiful public space Kensal Rise Community Library is today.
The library is run by volunteers and the Library Manager, wholly independently of Brent Council.
For more details of this extraordinary story, go to About Us/Our History.
