1-230-663 - Reproduced by permission of Historic England/Heritage Images

A staircase in the John Rylands Library, Deansgate, University of Manchester, 1942. It is an arched carved stone staircase decorated with quatrefoils on the inside of the arches. It was endowed in memory of John Rylands, a textile manufacturer, and built in the Gothic style to designs by the architect Basil Champneys between 1890-99. John Rylands was a textile manufacturer who in the 1840s took control of the family business Rylands & Sons Ltd, and developed it into one of the largest textile manufacturing and trading companies in Britain.