A Decade of Exhibitions in Armagh Robinson Library
2025-02-09 10:00 - 2025-12-31 16:00 (Europe/London) | Armagh Robinson Library, 43 Abbey Street, Armagh, BT61 7DY, United Kingdom
For over a decade the Library has hosted a variety of temporary exhibitions, drawing objects from its own collections.

The subjects ranged from the beautiful, extraordinary, unknown, interesting to the thought-provoking.

In our current temporary exhibition some of the works that were on display in the past decade have returned.

We have highlighted different objects represented in our collections: marbled papers, gems, prints, medals and medieval bronze bells.

We have also displayed some of the books that have evoked surprise and awe amongst our visitors during past exhibitions.

There are Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, Paxton’s Magazine of Botany, and Register of Flowering Plants, the 1770 Census of Armagh, the Breeches Bible, a 16th century Book of Hours and Roman Missal, a late 17th century collection of maps, and two works by 18th century women writers, Bluestocking Society Elizabeth Montagu and mathematician Maria Agnesi.

Morning Closure Library 25 September 2025
2025-09-25 10:00 - 14:00
The Library will be closed this morning, Thursday 25 September 2025, due to the quarterly Governors and Guardians meeting taking place in the Long Room.

Book launch | The Unbroken Covenant: Could Ulster Unionists have controlled a nine-county Northern Ireland?
2025-09-25 19:00 - 20:30
Book launch by Dr Samuel Beckton, a historian from Belfast, of his new book, The Unbroken Covenant: Could Ulster Unionists have controlled a nine-county Northern Ireland?, that commemorates the centenary of the 1925 Irish Boundary Commission.

During discussions for the Government of Ireland Act 1920, Northern Ireland as we know it was created. But there were discussions of the Irish boundary line, including partitioning the full province of Ulster.

This raises a fundamental ‘what if’ within Irish Studies, could Ulster Unionists have controlled nine-county Northern Ireland? This a counterfactual history to mark the centenary of the 1925 Irish Boundary Commission, as a reflection of the impact of partition, and subsequent questions of what the knock-on impact would have been. In particular, how would this altered timeline have affected the border counties? Could Ulster Unionists have controlled Monaghan County Council? Would Border County Unionists have been able to return representatives to Stormont? How would a nine-county Northern Ireland have influenced the Battle of the Atlantic during World War II?

These questions, and much more, will be answered in this work as it looks at how history could have taken a different turn.

Quote from The Unbroken Covenant, by Dr Samuel Beckton

The book will be on sale at a special price of £25.00.

Morning Closure Library 1 October 2025
2025-10-01 10:00 - 14:00
The Library will be closed this morning, Wednesday 1 October 2025, due to a private event.

National Poetry Day 2025
2025-10-02 19:30 - 21:30
The City Chapter’s National Poetry Day 2025 event with poets Wendy Sinnamon and Paul Jeffcutt will be held at Armagh Robinson Library on Thursday 2 October 2025 at 7.30pm.

Prior booking is requested by contacting Armagh Robinson Library on telephone 028 37523142 or by e-mail admin@armaghrobinsonlibrary.co.uk

Admission to the event is free, with donations to the City Chapter most welcome.

Wendy Sinnamon is a poet, writer, facilitator and special educational needs teaching assistant from Portadown.

She obtained a BA Honours in Creative Writing and English Literature in 2022 and recently she achieved a Masters with Distinction in English Literature.

Wendy is a recipient of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Support for Individual Artists Programme and has received several bursaries from The Irish Writers Centre and The John Hewitt Society.

Her debut fiction manuscript was shortlisted for the 2022 Penguin Random House WriteNow competition. She was shortlisted for the 2023 and the 2024 Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing.

Her poetry has been published in Abridged, The Honest Ulsterman, The Waxed Lemon and Poetry Bus and several of works were also included in the Fusion anthology published earlier this year by Broken Spine Press.

My poetry often blurs the lines between fantasy and reality, the past and the present. I seek to explore the complex relationship between identity and memory, what we choose to remember and what we choose to forget. I dive into history, personal and shared, ancient and recent, to uncover truths, if any, about the connections we develop with each other and the wider world and how these coalesce and become the self, whatever that means.

Paul Jeffcutt is a writer from Banbridge. He has won thirty-three awards for poetry in competitions in Ireland, the UK and the USA. He has three full collections of poetry: ‘True’, Black Spring Press (2025), ‘The Skylark’s Call’, Dempsey & Windle (2020) and ‘Latch’, Lagan Press (2010). He is widely published in literary journals and anthologies.

Paul will launch his third collection of poetry, ‘True’, published by Black Spring Press at the event. It will be on sale at the special price of £10 during this event.

The poems were all inspired by true stories from real lives. The sources were news reports, exhibitions, diaries, brochures, sagas, public notices, journals, broadcasts, obituaries and word of mouth. They are not ‘found poems’ – instead, each real-life story provided the launch pad for new work. Ciaran Carson called them ‘discovered poems’. ‘True’ brings together my discovered poems, twelve of which have won awards. The book is dedicated to the late Ciaran Carson, founding Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre in Belfast.

– Paul Jeffcutt

Paul Jeffcutt’s poetry has always been tempted by the coincidental and the accidental, finding strange wonders in juxtaposition and enigma. With ‘True’, this risk-taking reaches a new stage of fluency, insight and daring. Along the pathways of these literally ‘out-of-the-ordinary’ poems, the big themes are explored, in the company of other artists, pioneers, adventurers and plain folk like ourselves. A joy to read.

– Damian Smyth, Head of Literature and Drama at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland

Morning Closure Library 9 October 2025
2025-10-09 10:00 - 14:00
The Library will be closed this morning, Thursday 9 October 2025, due to a group visit.

An Art Exhibition with a Difference: Icons on Ammo Boxes
2025-10-09 10:00 - 2025-10-24 16:00
The Library is pleased to be the first venue in Northern Ireland to host a special exhibition, Icons on Ammo Boxes, with art works by Ukrainian artists Sonya Atlantova and Oleksandr Klymenko. The artworks are painted on the bases of empty ammunition boxes from Ukraine.

The exhibition will run from Thursday 9 October to Friday 24 October, following the Library’s normal opening hours.

The artists Sonya Atlantova and Oleksandr Klymenko (Kyiv, Ukraine) chose to combine two contrasting objects in their artwork: ammunition boxes and religious icons. Their aim is to transform death, linking with the ammunition box, into life, shown in Ukrainian life by an icon. The artists believe that the icons, painted on boxes brought from the war zone, are silent yet eloquent witnesses of the war. The boxes also play another important role: the artwork is for sale, with proceeds going to buy ambulances and evacuation vehicles on the front line in Ukraine.

The exhibition has been on display in a wide range of venues throughout Europe, and most recently in Scotland. Armagh Robinson Library has had the pleasure of working with Ukrainian families who are living in County Armagh and the Library wants to continue this valued link with them. We will hold a special open night on Thursday 9 October 2025 from 7.30pm in the Library. The exhibition will run until Friday 24 October, following the Library’s normal opening hours.

Speaking ahead of the open night, one of the Ukrainian mothers, Inna Shynkevich said,

This exhibition is very special to us because it shows how even in the darkest times, life and hope can be born out of destruction. We are honoured to bring it to Northern Ireland for the first time, and I sincerely hope that more venues across the region will open their doors so that as many people as possible can see these powerful works.

The Keeper of the Library, the Very Revd Shane Forster, added,

We are deeply humbled to receive and have the opportunity to display these beautiful Ukrainian icons. They tell a story of a war-torn land, of death, destruction and despair, but also of hope, faith and light in the midst of the darkest of times.

Morning Closure Library 16 October 2025
2025-10-16 10:00 - 13:00
The Library will be closed this morning, Thursday 16 October 2025, for a Morning on the Hill school visit.

Morning Closure Library 22 October 2025
2025-10-22 10:00 - 14:00
The Library will be closed this morning, Wednesday 22 October 2025, due to a private event.

Morning Closure Library 23 October 2025
2025-10-23 10:00 - 13:00
The Library will be closed this morning, Thursday 23 October 2025, for a Morning on the Hill school visit.

Library Closure
2025-10-30 10:00 - 2025-10-31 16:00
The Library will be closed Thursday 30 and Friday 31 October 2025, due to staff leave.

Morning Closure Library 6 November 2025
2025-11-06 10:00 - 14:00
The Library will be closed this morning, Thursday 6 November 2025, due to a group visit.

Morning Closure Library 12 November 2025
2025-11-12 10:00 - 13:00
The Library will be closed this morning, Wednesday 12 November 2025, for a Morning on the Hill school visit.

Morning Closure Library 13 November 2025
2025-11-13 10:00 - 13:00
The Library will be closed this morning, Thursday 13 November 2025, for a Morning on the Hill school visit.

Afternoon Closure Library 17 November 2025
2025-11-17 10:00 - 14:00
The Library will be closed this afternoon, Monday 17 November 2025, due to a group visit.

Morning Closure Library 20 November 2025
2025-11-20 10:00 - 13:00
The Library will be closed this morning, Thursday 20 November 2025, for a Morning on the Hill school visit.

Morning Closure Library 27 November 2025
2025-11-27 10:00 - 14:00
The Library will be closed this morning, Thursday 27 November 2025, due to the quarterly Governors and Guardians meeting taking place in the Long Room.

Rokeby Lecture 2025 | The Other Bishop's Library: Thomas Percy's Books, Ballads, Elks and Pikes
2025-11-27 19:30 - 21:00
The Rokeby Lecture 2025, The Other Bishop’s Library: Thomas Percy’s Books, Ballads, Elks and Pikes, by Dr Frank Ferguson, will be held on the first day of the Georgian Festival, Thursday 27 November 2025.

In this talk, Dr Ferguson will explore the impact of Bishop Thomas Percy of Dromore, County Down. History has not been kind to Percy. He has not enjoyed the same renown as Archbishop Robinson of Armagh or Bishop Hervey of Downhill. However, it could be argued that Percy’s literary endeavours as collector, editor and patron shaped the cultural landscape of Ireland and Britain in multiple and profound ways.

Frank Ferguson will suggest that Percy’s work and approach, set amid a time of political upheaval in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in Ireland, offered a means to use song and poetry as a means to find common ground, religious tolerance and reconciliation.

Frank Ferguson is the Research Director for English Language and Literature at Ulster University. An experienced researcher in Irish literary studies, he has written and edited a number of publications on Irish and Northern Irish literature including, Ulster-Scots Writing, an Anthology, (Four Courts, 2008) Revising Robert Burns and Ulster: literature, religion and politics, c.1770-1920 (Four Courts 2009) John Hewitt, A North Light (Four Courts, 2013. He is the editor of Balancing Acts: Conversations with Gerald Dawe on a Life in Poetry (Irish Academic Press 2023). He has managed a number of major projects on Irish writing. He is the current Chair of the John Hewitt Society, a Governor of the Linen Hall Library and a Committee Member of the Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund.

Georgian Day 2025
2025-11-29 11:00 - 17:00
The Georgian buildings of the Library and No 5 Vicars’ Hill, the former Registry, will be open for Georgian Day on Saturday 29th November 2025.

Both buildings were part of Archbishop Robinson’s plans for Georgian Armagh. The Library was built in 1771 as a public library and is the oldest library in Northern Ireland. The 1772 Registry used to hold precious documents and records, on Georgian Day you can learn about Wax Sealing. Armagh Robinson Library will also be open on Sunday 30th November from 2.00pm to 5.00pm.

All events are drop in – no booking required – free of charge, donations welcome.

Library staff and volunteers will be to answer any questions about the Library’s treasures. They will have help from one of our Georgian characters, Mrs Smith.

A Georgian Caricaturist will be in the Library to capture your character between 12 noon to 4.30pm.

St Patrick’s Church of Ireland Cathedral will host Choral Evensong at 5.00pm in the Cathedral.

Georgian Festival 2025
2025-11-30 14:00 - 17:00
Armagh Robinson Library will be open for the Georgian Festival on Sunday 30th November 2025.

The building was part of Archbishop Robinson’s plans for Georgian Armagh. The Library was built in 1771 as a public library and is the oldest library in Northern Ireland. All events are drop in – no booking required – free of charge, donations welcome.

Library staff and volunteers will be to answer any questions about the Library’s treasures. They will have help from one of our Georgian characters, Mrs Smith.

A Georgian Silhouette cutter will be in the Library to capture your silhouette between 2 and 4.30pm.

Armagh Robinson Library and No 5. the former Registry will also be open on Georgian Day, Saturday 29th November, from 11.00pm to 5.00pm.

Morning Closure Library 4 December 2025
2025-12-04 10:00 - 13:00
The Library will be closed this morning, Thursday 4 December 2025, for a Morning on the Hill school visit.

Morning Closure Library 12 December 2025
2025-12-12 10:00 - 13:00
The Library will be closed this morning, Friday 12 December 2025, for a group visit.

Christmas Closure 2025
2025-12-25 10:00 - 2026-01-01 16:00
Christmas closure 2025 | The Library will be closed from Thursday 25 December 2025 until Thursday 1 January 2026 inclusive.

On Friday 2 January 2026, the Library will be open in the morning only, from 10am to 1pm.

Morning Closure Library 7 January 2026
2026-01-07 10:00 - 13:00
The Library will be closed this morning, Tuesday 7 January 2026, for a group visit.

Exhibition | United States of America : The Road to Independence
2026-01-12 10:00 - 2026-07-04 16:00
Exhibition | United States of America : The Road to Independence

On 4 July 2026, the 250th anniversary of the signing of Declaration of Independence of the United States of America will be marked.

In this exhibition we look at the history of North America in the run up to the official formation of the United States of America.

The exhibition will be on display in the Long Room from Monday 12 January until Saturday 4 July 2026.

Morning Closure Library 2 February 2026
2026-02-02 10:00 - 12:00
The Library will be closed this morning, Monday 2 February 2026, for the official launch of our latest temporary exhibition: United States of America : The Road to Independence.

Morning Closure Library 6 February 2026
2026-02-06 10:00 - 12:00
The Library will be closed this morning, Friday 6 February 2026, for a group visit.

Playful Museums Festival 2026
2026-02-20 10:30 - 11:30
The Library is delighted to take part in the Playful Museums Festival 2026 with two sessions, Willow the Warbler’s Journey, for pre-school children and their carers. The Festival is made possible by grants and support from the Northern Ireland Museums Council (NIMC).

The sessions will take place from 10.30am to 11.30am on Friday 20 and Saturday 21 February 2026.

Both sessions will be offered free of charge and are open to families with children under 5 years old.

Booking is essential by telephoning 028 37523142 or e-mailing admin@armaghrobinsonlibrary.co.uk

The sessions will be run by facilitator Ursula Monaghan:

We will look at the journey of a willow warbler, a bird which travels from Africa in spring to spend the summer here. The story will include physical movements and singing with the children. We will have colouring-in activities and a little booklet for the children to take home, so that carers and children can continue to explore the importance of caring for small birds and the vital role they play in our environment.

The Library’s Assistant Keeper, Carol Conlin, said,

We are very pleased to participate in the Playful Museums Festival for another year. We have been successful in gaining grants and publicity with the previous festivals but do not take such support for granted. It is a marvellous boost for us as we are a small independent museum which is keen to encourage families with young children to visit us. It will be a pleasure to have Ursula back with us to facilitate the sessions.

We hope that we may welcome local families, and staff members and families of ArKe Sure Start who have encouraged us to be a ‘playful museum’.

Playful Museums Festival 2026
2026-02-21 10:30 - 11:30
The Library is delighted to take part in the Playful Museums Festival 2026 with two sessions, ‘Willow the Warbler’s Journey’, for pre-school children and their carers. The Festival is made possible by grants and support from the Northern Ireland Museums Council (NIMC).

The sessions will take place from 10.30am to 11.30am on Friday 20 and Saturday 21 February 2026.

Both sessions will be offered free of charge and are open to families with children under 5 years old.

Booking is essential by telephoning 028 37523142 or e-mailing admin@armaghrobinsonlibrary.co.uk

The sessions will be run by facilitator Ursula Monaghan:

We will look at the journey of a willow warbler, a bird which travels from Africa in spring to spend the summer here. The story will include physical movements and singing with the children. We will have colouring-in activities and a little booklet for the children to take home, so that carers and children can continue to explore the importance of caring for small birds and the vital role they play in our environment.

The Library’s Assistant Keeper, Carol Conlin, said,

We are very pleased to participate in the Playful Museums Festival for another year. We have been successful in gaining grants and publicity with the previous festivals but do not take such support for granted. It is a marvellous boost for us as we are a small independent museum which is keen to encourage families with young children to visit us. It will be a pleasure to have Ursula back with us to facilitate the sessions.

We hope that we may welcome local families, and staff members and families of ArKe Sure Start who have encouraged us to be a ‘playful museum’.

Morning Closure Library 26 February 2026
2026-02-26 10:00 - 13:00
The Library will be closed this morning, Thursday 26 February 2026, for a Morning on the Hill school visit.
