The greater part of Sabine Baring-Gould’s personal library was lent to the National Trust to fill the empty shelves at Killerton House, near Exeter, in the early 1970s and, after 40 years, the Trust has requested the Baring-Gould family to take the books away, so that they can create a new library, more closely linked to the history of the house and the Acland Family. Over the next year the 3000+ books in this collection will be moving to the library at the University of Exeter. The books consist of the family library, including many ancient and valuable books, as well as those added to it by Sabine Baring-Gould in the course of his research for his books, for his folk song collection, for his Icelandic Studies and his other interests. There are no study facilities at Killerton so, while we are sorry that there will no longer be the beautiful display of the books that we have had in the past, there will now be proper access to the books for research purposes. This means that the four major collections of Baring-Gould’s books and manuscripts are now available to the public in Devon, his home county. The collection that is moving to Exeter University includes a number of the books that he wrote as well as those he referred to for his writing, and a number of books presented to him by other authors (including Cecil Sharp). The folk song manuscripts and that part of his popular literature collection formerly at Killerton are now in the Devon Record Office, Exeter, together with many other family papers. Other manuscripts are in the West Devon Record Office, Plymouth and the fourth collection is that of his books in Plymouth City Library, which was bequeathed to them by his admirer, Francis Nicolle. You can see a press release about the move here.
