Opening Hours

MAIN LIBRARY:

Tuesday & Wednesday:  10- 6pm

Thursday & Friday:         10 - 7pm

Saturday & Sunday:        12 - 4pm

DEDICATED CHILDREN'S AREA:

Tuesday & Friday:            10 - 5pm

Saturday:                          12 - 4pm

Children can borrow books and DVDs during Main Library Hours.

RHYME TIME - £3 per child:

  • Tuesdays at 10.30 with Cara

  • Fridays at 10.30 with Dawn

Monday & Bank Holidays : LIBRARY CLOSED

About Us

Keats Community Library (KCL) opened its doors on the 17th April 2012 taking over the beautiful building previously known as the Heath Library which was run by Camden Council. The Building is now on the List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest. The building is now listed at Grade II.

KCL is an independent charity financially supported by the local Community with over 50 volunteers.

The Charity is overseen by an upaid Board of Directors acting as Trustees. The current Trustees are:  Steven Bobasch (Chair), David Burns (Treasurer), Jana Harrison,   Victoria Joel,  Lee Montague, Jonathan Nakouzi and Nigel Steward (Secretary), 

The positions of fundraising manager and volunteer managers are currently open - Please contact us if you are able to consider either of these . .

The Charity's objectives are to keep the library open, to provide a service which reflects what the local Community wants, to promote literacy generally and to be a welcoming place in the Community.  The library is not static and is very much open to ideas for change - we only ask that they are practical.KCL is entirely dependant on the local Community for survival  in terms of volunteers to run the day to day and associated projects, such as events, as well for financing. If the Community wants to keep its library open, then It is up to the Ccommunity to support  it.

KCL has to pay market rates for:

  • Using the building with Licence fees to The City of London Corporation (Keats House) for its occupancy of the building,
  • Paid staff such as apprentices.
  • Buying and maintaining the stock of 20,000 books and DVDS
  • Technology to keep running the public computers and WiFif  ,the printer and copiers and the Heritage Library system
  • Events outside Library times at £56 an hour to the City of London

KCL works closely with, and is supported by,  a number of local groups and charities, the Heath and Hampstead Society, and the South End Green Association, the Hampstead Summer Festival and the Hampstead Wells and Campden Trust as well as many residents associations and trader groups.

Keats Community Library was formed on 21st December 2011 as a company limited by guarantee (07889559) and is a UK registered charity (1146702).

FINANCIAL INFORMATION on Keats Community Library  - click on the item to view

2014 KCL Annual Report and Accounts

2013 KCL Annual Report

2012 KCL Report of activities

Financial Report for 2012

Report of the Independant Examiner on the 2012 Accounts

The history of the Library building

Heath Library started at the turn of the century as a Book Exchange in a shop at 21 South End Green, opposite Hampstead Heath Station. Borrowers had to hand in a signed list of titles, and a few hours later a book or books, obtained from the Arkwright Road Library (itself long closed) , would be waiting for them.

In 1907 a library opened in the former school building in Worsley Road (now part of Pilgrim’s Lane).

Keats House was purchased in 1921 and placed in the care of  Hampstead Borough in 1924.

In 1931 the present library, designed to blend with the style and scale of the house, was purpose built in its grounds to serve also as a museum for the Keats Memorial Library, a collection formed by Sir Charles Duke and given to the Borough in 1911. Camden Council was the Successor to Hampstead Borough Council and they managed the site.

The building then passed to the management of The City of London when they acquired Keats House, and Camden took a Lease on the building to continue to operate Heath Library. Camden Council surrendered their lease on 16th April 2012 having closed the Heath Library on the 31st March 2012 as part of their budget savings programme. 

In March 2016, the  Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has decided to add Keats Community Library to the List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest. The building is now listed at Grade II.
http://www.keatscommunitylibrary.org.uk/about.php
www.keatscommunitylibrary.org.uk
crawl=CC-MAIN-2016-50
19795
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:E3GBL6I5ZC4RLT6LS5V3Y45TBUDCMSU5
<urn:uuid:d8394db3-33a9-4189-94fe-cf8b74f7eb6b>
2016-12-08T07:46:15Z
54.152.231.215
sha1:Z6K6M2WNEIB3XYMMFCQQIROCC3D32AM7
<urn:uuid:997347ac-8af2-45fa-bbfb-ebc514424589>
http://www.keatscommunitylibrary.org.uk/about.php
response
<urn:uuid:4aedcba6-d461-4950-86df-e854d1e08c81>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-31-129-80.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2016-50
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for November 2016
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf