Day 19: The Middle Temple Law Library

The Inn Courts of Middle Temple

 British Studies 2019 Group Photo

The Inns Estate was built around the 1600s and it served as the quarters of the Honorable Society of the Middle Temple. It is the hub of law students, barristers, benchers, and master benchers. It was originally a group of law and humanities schools.

The Middle Temple Law Library 

We toured the Middle Temple Law library.  I saw bundles of Journals of various types of law: ecclesiastic, family, property, etc.

Historical collections:
Even though the Temple Library is considered a law reference library, there is more than law related material as the origins of the Inn Courts were a group of schools which included various disciplines. The library holds rare manuscripts and books related to  history, literature, politics, languages, religion, esoterica from the 1600s.

Robert Ashley's Collection:
The library was established in 1601. In 1641, Robert Ashley, a barrister from Middle Temple who bequeathed his collection of 3,700 books. He also lived in the chambers. Although his collections are not necessarily adequate for law by today standards, these are important because they contain valuable information about the history of the place.

There are books from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries belonging to John Donne, Ben Jonson, Jhon Dee, Sir John Anstruther, Sir Christopher Hatton (History of the Library).

After the civil war, the library re-established in 1680 and it has grown ever since a core collection which consists of small rare books and manuscripts concerning the common law system. The library keeps all editions of older material from laws cases from medieval times around the sixteenth century. They don't collect student law bar exams, but have records of people who are already practicing law. Currently, they hold at least 50 thousand titles and 500,000 volumes.


The Temple Law Library houses two of the sixteen terrestrial and celestial globes that Emery Molyneaux designed since the 1500's. The terrestrial globe was updated to reflect the continent of Africa. It used to be located in the Queen's Room.
This is a picture of one of the two Molyneaux globes, "one of the Inn's greatest treasures" (History of the Temple Library).

As you walk the halls of the reading room, there are many portraits, a collection of Prime Ministres since the 1700's.   This is what the reading room looks like from above.

The Inn librarians were known as Keepers of the library. Being a keeper was a commitment, you had to sign a bonding contract to warranty safety of the holdings.

We then toured the Middle Temple Hall and entered the Queen and the Prince's rooms. Beautiful architecture and fine wood carvings. Plaques of every bencher  are located on the walls of the hall.