Welcome to our Website

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Friends of Cobbett Road Library (FCRL) is an informal group of people of all ages who met at monthly intervals in the library. FCRL initially came into being to protect a greatly valued community asset and members set about publicising their cause in the local newspaper, putting posters in their windows. Since then the FCRL and Cobbett Road Library went from strength to strength organising events, activities and, with Library staff, making the library the centre of a friendly and lively local community.

More recently, we have been working hard to promote the Library's future, and contributed to the Council's process for finding an organisation to operate the building after SCiA pulled out.

Together with the Friends of Bitterne Station, we have supported and promoted the local Art Trail.

News

Mad Hatters Tea Party

World Book Day is officially on March 6 this year, but our Library was not open that day, so we celebrated it on Wednesday March 5, from 2:30pm to 4:30pm, with a Mad Hatter's Tea Party.  There were the usual Friends' light refreshments (thanks for all the donations), and some Friends came in costume.  There are some photos on the Photogallery page.


LIBRARY OPENING HOURS

Library service at Cobbett is now 1pm to 5pm on Tuesdays, 1pm to 5pm on Wednesday, 3pm to 5:30pm on Friday and 11am to 3pm on Saturday.  Since these sessions are all provided purely by volunteers, some may have to be cancelled at short notice - please do not be alarmed if you are unfortunate enough to be affected by this.

There's a slideshow of facilities and services in our Photogallery.

Campaigns, news and updates

Library service was provided by  SCiA Group ​as part of their operation of Cobbett Hub & Library​ between 2017 and January 2021. What was originally the "Save YOUR Library" page on this website is now called "Campaigning 2011 to 2016", with details of the SCiA regime and how the change from Council operation came about.
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If you would like to keep informed, Click here to register for the Friends of Cobbett Road Library Newsletter. Also like our facebook page and we keep can you posted. 

Find Cobbett Road Library

There is no car parking available at Cobbett Hub - the nearest on-street area without parking restrictions is about 150 yards away in Cobbett Road.

Bus services to and from the City centre are frequent - First Bus/City Red 8, BlueStar 3, 16 & 18, Xelabus X10 all stop nearby.  Follow this link to Google Maps showing the location of their stops and Bitterne Railway Station.
The Library's postcode is SO18 1HL, but online maps show that location some distance from building.  We could offer latitude and longitude, but a more user-friendly system is What3Words, where the Library entrance is coded hired.solo.lace and the end of the no-parking yellow line in Cobbett Road is exists.agrees.broke (pretty much where online maps show the postcode "pin").  Some in-car GPS sets can use What3Words locations.


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