In pictures: Chichester library's new look means more space for fun

Alongside refreshing the Grade-II listed building’s interior, the refurbishment has seen a number of extensive layout changes, creating an all-new activity space, expanding the children’s section and increasing the number of books on the ground floor.

Made possible by Section 106 funding collected from developments across West Sussex, work on the project started on March 31 continuing throughout spring and early summer, and staff say it’s now a bigger, better and more flexible community space.

"All the new shelving is flexible, we can move it around; which means we can grow, shift and adapt to trends over the next five years,” explained Russell Allen, head of Libraries and Heritage at West Sussex County Council. "But it also means we can move things out of the way, so the whole ground floor area is much more flexible for activities.”

The children’s space is also much improved, he added: “There’s much more room for families, buggies and prams; it’s so much more family friendly. plus it’s bigger,” and, with more space for fiction, bookworms will be happy too.

"We’ve got so much space to grow our fiction shelves. This library has historically had fewer books then comparable libraries like Horsham, so now we’ve got that much more space to grow and we want to invest in more book stock.”

The work took place over several months after it was discovered that the building’s ground floor lighting needed rewiring and replacing, but staff did their best to offer visitors a complete service, following a brief closure.

"We did what we could to compress the library into the first floor,” explained Library manager Gareth Edmunds. “We were nicely supported by Ede’s House, where our reader’s groups met for their meetings, and the transformation centre, which is about a five minute walk from here, very kindly let us use their space for toddler time, which meant that we ran almost a complete service even while the works were ongoing. It was really nice to be able to do, and we’ve had a lot of comments from appreciative visitors.”