everton library Trust
Everton Library Trust was set up in 2025 to build on the OPEN Campaign and to ensure that the building has a future use to benefit the local community, in terms of jobs, training.
We want this beautiful, well-designed building to be a safe social space for local people for business and learning. Thomas Shelmerdine was the civic architect. Liverpool City Council are the building owners.
So we set it up as something called a Community Benefit Society, with charitable aims and as a member of Co-ops UK. We are a membership society, open to all, and are committed to working collectively to achieve our charitable objectives.
Our charitable objectives
Restoration of a landmark building which builds the skills base in the neighbourhood, and enhances civic pride
Raising of educational attainment and pathways to employment
Creation of local jobs and apprenticeships
Reducing social isolation, supporting health and wellbeing
Founding members
❋ polly moseley
❋ professor simon lee - CHair
Maureen Royce lives locally in Everton and her personal mission has been to extend educational opportunities to those who may have found themselves excluded. When she was Associate Dean, Education, and the Director of Accreditation at Liverpool Business School, Liverpool John Moores University, Maureen was awarded the highest level of CIPD membership in recognition of her work at North Region level.
Maureen is Chair of the Liverpool Irish Centre and was appointed as Co-Chair of the Bluecoat in 2025.
Voluntary work has been a consistent part of Maureen's practice, working with organisations to help to shape board development for sustainability. Her key areas of knowledge and experience include HR, wellbeing and social justice and her PhD thesis is entitled “ Experiences of Education 1944-1979 in Everton, Liverpool”.
She has previously held a variety of roles at organisations such as Amnesty International, The Women's Organisation and The Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development. Maureen is also Chair of Liverpool Irish Centre and is involved in heritage projects.
❋ Arthur Hayward
“I was born, bred and brought up in Liverpool and remain a resident of this great city. Links with the Everton area go back to the seven years I spent from 1963 to 1970 at John Hamilton High School, Everton. I remember fondly travelling on the 25 bus up St Domingo Brow and passing the Everton Library, two stops before alighting for school. My family have always had long standing links to Everton with grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins living in Mere Lane and on Heyworth Street. Writing this evokes many emotional and fond memories of the area.In 1971, I was fortunate to gain a place at Liverpool University and to use this as a foundation for a teaching career in Liverpool which spanned forty four years from 1975 to 2019. Many of my pupils lived in the Anfield and Everton districts, providing many tales of life in both neighbourhoods. I feel privileged to be a part of the Everton Library Trust with a group of committed, enthusiastic and inspiring colleagues.”
❋ carl oprey
❋ maureen royce
“I now consider Everton my home, after moving to Liverpool in 2009. There is a sense of loss embedded in the landscape here, due to the mass demolitions, which makes Everton Library stand out more as a beautiful example of Victorian architecture, with a unique set of rooms. When I learned that it was a Technical Institute, and the breadth of skills, still relevant today, which were taught within the building, this married with the views of local people who want jobs and skills, as well as a quiet reading room and space for social activities.
My background has involved working in economic development, pubic health and the arts, and I am fluent French-speaker. I have learned a lot about community development since my move to Liverpool and about how the skills within communities like Everton are often undervalued and overlooked.
I am passionate about co-operative ways of working and embedding care for the landscape and the heritage to project forward a more beautiful and active public realm with community spaces as accessible and vibrant. The Trust has some quality connections to make this happen and is committed to supporting the process for emergency repairs to ensure that the full restoration time-scale can be agreed and shared with community members before another winter is out.”
❋ tom doubtfire - Secretary
“I am an artist and youth worker from Liverpool, and currently the secretary of Everton Library Trust. I first found out about Everton Library while studying in LJMU doing a Fine Art degree and decided to make the treck from town on my bike to the library. Speaking to a lollipop lady, it was clear that this space is missed. That was in 2019 and now in 2026, there is the urgent need to get this building back into the communities hands.”
Born-poor, Carl O'Prey arrived in Liverpool to parents of Irish decending. After a childhood of dangerous chores and rampant truancy led him from the Everyman Youth Theatre to the Liverpool School of Art and University of East Anglia, which further contributed to his poverty status, he taught in New York University and was an exclusive art reviewer at MOMA.
Carl is a writer working across prose fiction, stage, screen and journalism. His screenplays have been commissioned by Searchlight Pictures, Channel 4, Scottish Screen and BBC Films. His stage plays have been performed in London, Los Angeles and New York.
Short fiction has been published widely and long-listed for the BBC First Words Short Story Award. Falling Water (2022) was published by Mercuious. Excerpts from The Lawn of Sleeping Soldiers appeared in CommuterLit (2023).
This recently-published novel charts three generations of Carl’s family and features their home in Amelia Street which was bombed in the May Blitz, killing his Uncle Tommy, who’s life provided the impetus for this seminal work, shared with students in North Liverpool Academy in 2026. Carl’s vision is for Everton Library and Everton Park to become a film hub and his US networks, including New York Public Library, where he wrote this book, could be vital to connecting with the Everton Diaspora.
Professor Simon Lee agreed to Chair the board given his success in developing the SFX church and school in Everton into Liverpool Hope's campus for the creative arts, a £20million project, when he was the head of Liverpool Hope University College. His wider community engagement in Liverpool also brings value, from when he chaired the Netherley Valley Partnership, the Independent Monitoring Board for the Liverpool Education Authority and the Merseyside Theatres' Trust board, plus his experiences of community engagement, partnerships and regeneration in other cities, and his work with Carnegie, famous for libraries around the world. Simon is Emeritus Professor of Jurisprudence at Queen's University Belfast (where he can be contacted at simon.lee@qub.ac.uk) and this year has launched the Olney Review of Books (ORB). He returns frequently to Everton and also now chairs the board of the William Temple Foundation which is developing a Masters by Research in partnership with Liverpool Hope University.
SUPPORTERS AND MEMBERS
Some of the magnificent Everton Library Ambassadors who supported the OPENEvertonLIbrary Campaign, including Danny Callaghan, Ceramic City Stories, Stoke; Trevor Skempton, Architect, Advisor on LiverpoolONE; Teachers and students, North Liverpool Academy; Workers, Qudriga; Myriam Lahnite, Urban Designer; Councillor Portia Fahey; Dan James, Development Director, Eden Project; Peter Stewart, Founder BIG LUNCH; Dr Simon Abrams; Chrisie Byrne, Friends of Walton Hall Park; Rev Adam Maynard…..
Photos by Sam Batley
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Architectural Heritage Fund have awarded Everton Library Trust £13,800 to update and add value to the viability work undertaken to date. So far this work will include:-
Harrison Stringfellow Architects
Max Fordham
Merseyside Buildings’ Preservation Trust
QS and Heritage Consultant to be appointed
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Thanks to the following organisations and people for their goodwill and support:-
St George’s Everton
Shrewsbury House Youth Club
Frank Kennedy
Councillor Portia Fahey, Everton North
North Liverpool Academy
Homebaked Bakery
Peter Carney - Soccer in the City & Scouse Flowerhouse
Kitty’s Launderette
Mike Badger
Jeff Young - award-winning author / playwright
Friends of Everton Park
ORB (Olney Review of Books)
Ken Rogers
Liverpool Irish Centre
Two Up Two Down
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These included and were not limited to:-
Curtin’s Liverpool
LJMU Architecture School and Business School
Rider Levett Bucknall
Shrewsbury House Youth Centre
North Liverpool Academy
Homebaked Bakery
Dan Carden MP
Trevor Skempton
Quadriga
Dr Barnabas Calder, Liverpool School of Architecture
Jamie Reid (iconic artist)
News from Nowhere (Co-operative Independent Bookshop)
The Old Library & Lister Steps
co-production
Everton Library created a real home for all people no matter who they were to access space to learn, dream, share and experience. The library helped many people to learn to read for the first time, inspiring many others to take interests in literacy and building real skills across generations.
Co-production to us means involving people at everyday stage of planning and restoration, working with our community as active makers of history. We want to generate activities and skills which will populate the library in the future. This means working in partnership with grassroots organisations and larger education providers to build capacity and co-create collective learning processes and pathways to employment. The restoration will take at least 5 years, if began now, so we encourage anyone who would like to work with us in any capacity to get in touch.
To see what’s been happening so far you can visit our Events page.
Sketches by North End Sketch Club led by Jayne Lawless 2021.