Ann Breslin

My father was exactly the type of person Brook Park had been created for.

The land that had become the park had been bought with a bequest from James Hood Brook, whose will stipulated that the park should be a place where the working man could enjoy on the Sabbath day his pipe and a pleasant walk.

or rest after the labours of a severe week's toil.

The park, opened in August 1901, was laid out as a typical Victorian park with an oval fish pond and park keepers who would shout and scold if an excited child put a foot on the grass.

The library sat at the top of the three sets of stone steps.

It had originally been an orphanage for boys, then a museum,

before becoming a library and exhibition space with a cannon on the lawn at the front door.

And inside, dim light, deep silence and shelves of books that seemed to stretch as high as the sky.

My father's library ticket allowed him to take out ten books and every now and again he would take me with him and let me get a book or two from the children's section.

These visits entailed what felt like endless hours of standing, trying not to fidget as he peered along the shelves, watching as he lifted down a book, read the back cover, put it back, moved slowly along the shelf, took down another and maybe this time added it to the pile under his arm.

Is it a trick of memory that makes me think I can see him puffing on his pipe during the book selection process?

The smell of the pipe smoke sweetening the musty smell of the library.

The day I saw my father crying marked the final loss of his sanctuary.

The army on their arrival in 1969 had already taken over part of the library building.

and removed a lot of the shrubbery from the park.

The pond was filled in and visiting the library was no longer the escape it had been.

When it was firebombed, the building was left to decay until it was completely derelict.

For a while the library was housed in port-a-cabins in a cabin off Infirmary Road, but I don't think my father ever went there.

Instead, he created his own personal library service with the owner of the secondhand bookshop at the bottom of Carlisle Road.

The small shop was not as grand, but here he could browse and discuss world affairs or the greyhound and horse racing until he settled on the three or four books which he bought.