From Storytime to Knit and Natter: A Library for Every Stage of Life

Kathy has a lifelong connection to Canning Town, born in Forest Gate Hospital in 1948, and raising her two children in the area. Her father worked at Tate and Lyle’s sugar factory and her mother worked at Standard Telephones and Cables, in the Woolwich/Silvertown area. I interviewed Kathy at her home in Plaistow, with a guest appearance in the background of the audio from her granddaughter’s dog Vinnie, on 9th September 2025.

Kathy remembers that going to the library was ‘part and parcel’ of everyday life, and something that her parents, cousins, aunts, family and friends all did. When she was a child, she went to her local library in Custom House. As a mother, she took her son and daughter to read books at Canning Town. When they’d grown up, she enjoyed using the Listening Library where she borrowed cassettes and tapes to pass the time doing her housework. Later in life, she joined the Knit and Natter group, getting involved in knitting special items for people with dementia and for the neonatal ward at Newham General Hospital, and socialising more widely with the women she met there (coach trips, Christmas meals and swimming). She found the library to be a great source of community and friendship.

Kathy paints a vivid picture of the contrast between the bustling Rathbone Market and the quiet of the library once you stepped inside off the Barking Road. She reflects on the changes she has seen throughout her life, from borrowing books because households couldn’t afford to buy their own, to the library becoming a place of community and belonging through other activities like yoga, to a move away from simpler things towards a reliance on computers and electronics.