Concerning the Russian Revolution and his family’s plans to return to home.

Concerning her stay with Austen Henry Layard and Enid Layard in Constantinople and social life.

The Mediaeval Manuscripts number just nine but include Petrus Lombardus' Sententi

The Miscellaneous Manuscripts include some local history material, particularly relating to nineteenth-century bonds and deeds and to the coal trade as well as A collection of recipes, compiled in the years 1684-5; agriculturalist Robert Bakewell's Letters to George Culley, 1786-1792; eighteenth-century household account books; manuscript letters from Henry Liddell on the 1715 Jacobite Rebellion; early twentieth-century National Service League memoranda; An alphabetical list of members of the Northumberland Militia enrolled between 1809 and 1813, giving their full names, places of residence, trades, ages, dates of enrolment, and parishes for which installed; a fair copy of poems by Mary Coleridge, bound in vellum, which she made for a friend in 1891 and which was later published as Fancy's Following; worksheets, correspondence, typescripts and a postcard relating to Tony Harrison's Newcastle is Peru and letters from Sean O'Casey to the People's Theatre, Newcastle.

This collection comprises a small amount of papers of and relating to William Lisle Blenkinsopp Coulson (1841-1911), army officer and campaigner for animal rights. It includes correspondence, published material relating to Blenkinsopp Coulson, and a number of family items namely a General Pardon granted by Edward IV, an Eighteenth Century recipe book and collections of stamps and postcards.

General Pardon granted by Edward IV to Elizabeth Blenkinsopp in the County of Northumberland for general transgressions, seemingly relating to events linked with the Siege of Harlech Castle (1461-1468) which was a key event in The Wars of the Roses. The document bears the Great Seal of Edward IV [damaged and incomplete].

The Robinson Collection comprises incunabula, medieval manuscripts and books so the material ranges from a fourteenth-century gradual to items published in the Nineteenth Century. The collection was bequeathed by Marjorie Robinson (d. 1998), widow of antiquarian bookseller, Philip Robinson. It includes early editions of works by Dante, Boccaccio and Tasso; rare pamphlets by Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift; and is a good resource for travel literature.

Highlights include an original Gutenberg Bible leaf [1400]; a book of hours which is printed on vellum, in a brown cloth binding with blue velvet spine and metal centerpiece, corner-pieces and ornamental clasp; presentation copies of Alexander Pope's works as well as books which he formerly owned and A letter from South Carolina, 2nd ed. (1718) which provides first-hand information on the pioneer settlement of that state.

The Bradshaw Collection contains books published 1601-1700 and is notable for its English Revolution, or Civil War, tracts, of which there are about sixty mostly describing local events, such as The Taking of Gateshead Hill: and blocking up of Newcastle … (1644), A Terrible and bloudy fight at Tinmouth Castle on Fryday last … (1648) and The King's declaration at Newcastle concerning his refusall to come to the parliament of England … (1647). Some of these are illustrated, often with wood-cut portraits.Other subjects represented in the collection include theology and some literature. Classical works, in Latin and Greek, by such authors as Catullus, Pliny, Virgil and Juvenal; Aristophanes, Dionysius and Euripides make up a large portion of the collection. The collection also has volume I of Edmund Gibson's English translation of William Camden's Britannia (1695), the first (Latin) edition of which had been the first comprehensive study of Britain.

The Pybus Collection, originally brought together by the esteemed local medic and surgeon Professor Frederick Charles Pybus (1883-1975), is rich in material relating to the history of medicine. The collection consists chiefly of some 2000 volumes which are mostly classics of the history of medicine, with particular reference to anatomy, surgery and medical illustration.

Highlights are Gilles de Corbeil's De Pulsibus (1494), the first printed book on the pulse, as well as a 1648 edition of William Harvey's celebrated work Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in which he published his discoveries about the motion of the heart and blood. There is also a 1555 edition of one of the most important and influential books in the history of medicine, De Humani Corporis Fabrica by Andreas Versalius. Most of the other celebrated anatomists are represented here too, as well as later pioneers and experts.

The Pybus collection also includes engravings, portraits, busts, holographic letters and a set of bleeding bowls (currently housed at the Walton Library).

St. Bees School, Cumbria was founded by Queen Elizabeth I in 1583 and its library was developed through donations from local gentry and clergy in the Seventeenth Century. The collection comprises mostly classical literature and theology, including 102 volumes which were printed in the Sixteenth Century, with several titles in Latin or Ancient Greek.

Alongside the classical authors sit Martin Luther's sermons; works by William Gilpin, John Ruskin, Oliver Goldsmith, Izaak Walton, James Boswell and Francis Bacon; there is a copy of Roald Amundsen's The South Pole: an account of the Norwegian Antarctic expedition in the “Fram”, 1910-1912 (1912) and C.G. Bruce's The assault on Mount Everest, 1922 (1923), as well as W.R. Calvert's Family holiday: a little tour in a second-hand car (1932).