Acquisition of a collection of medieval manuscripts from the library at Longleat House

Image

Our £1millon grant is helping The British Library preserve five rare Medieval manuscripts for the public.

The British Library acquired the manuscripts from the private library at Longleat House. The remarkable documents have now been digitised for everyone to access.

The collection includes:

• a trilingual dictionary, psalter and Hebrew grammar which was compiled in around 1250 by the monks of Ramsey Abbey together with Jewish scholars
• The Red Book of Bath, a 15th-century guide for town’s administrators including maps and texts on commerce
• Richard Rolle’s The Form of Living and related works, a rare example of a Middle English literary manuscript made for a woman in 15th-century Ireland and written in the Hiberno-English dialect
• a series of Middle English sermons written by a Cambridgeshire cleric around 1400
• an exquisitely illuminated Arma Christi, a devotional collection illustrated with objects relating to the Passion of Christ    

Find out more about the manuscripts.