DEDICATED volunteers have restored a unique Victorian law library fit for use in the 21st century reports ANDY SHERWILL.

The Mather-Jackson Library is now housed at the Sessions House building in Usk, with the books sitting on the same shelves as they would have originally been seen on for most of the last century.

But when the building became abandoned the collection was stored at County Hall in Cwmbran for safe keeping.

Eleven years ago the collection was returned to the Sessions House and a group of 20 Heritage Volunteers undertook the cataloguing and description of every volume.

And for the past four and a half years members of the team have been cleaning each volume and making minor repairs on a weekly basis.

Tony Fleming, curator of the law library said: "Without the tremendous contributions of the heritage volunteers from the Monmouthshire Decorative and Fine Arts Society the condition of the library would not be in the excellent state that it now is.

"When I first became involved during 2000, the books had just been returned and found that they were completely out of sequence and many of them were badly damaged.

"Over the time each volume has been documented, inspected, cleaned, repaired a big task as the collection contains 2,327 historic law books, some of which date back to the late 17th Century."

"Not every book could be repaired by the team and where more complicated remedial work has been identified, such as rebinding, this is being commissioned by the library trustees as funds allow.

"But this is inevitably a long-term project because of the cost. We've decide to repair the oldest books first and work our way methodically through the collection.

"The library is an important asset to the Sessions House and to the town of Usk and considerable thanks are due to the significant and unstinting efforts of the heritage volunteers in conserving this unique collection of books."

Already a number of researchers have used the library to further their studies as the collection has only a few gaps among the whole collection.

"You can't measure its value as its virtually unique and it can only be matched by those contained in academic libraries, added Mr Fleming.

"There's nothing quite like it."