A CAFE has been open less than a week and already there are queues out of the door and people are having to be turned away. Family-run BAKED has opened a new branch in Wallasey Village library on the Wirral.

Situated off St George’s Road, Wallasey Village Library was closed in October 2022 as part of sweeping cuts to balance Wirral Council’s budget that year. This saw the library as well as eight others closed alongside two golf courses and a leisure centre.

However a community group was set to take the library over and reopen it as a community centre with one third as a library, a third as a community space for people to hire, and a café. They have the building for 25 years and since taking over the building in April, they have been hard at work to reopen it.

Currently the community centre is open for hire with a book sale coming up as well as a food and makers market on November 10. The café is open seven days a week from 8am to 5pm Monday to Friday and 9am to 4pm on weekends.

Sue Simpson and Barbara Carrington are in the process of setting up the new library, around them lie dozens of bags and boxes of books waiting to be processed. Thousands of books have been dropped off and they’ve now had to stop accepting donations. Sue said: “You go away for a day and then come back and it’s like this.”

On the cafe’s first day on October 6, there were queues out of the door and people were having to be turned away until late in the afternoon. On a rainy Wednesday morning when the LDRS visited, every table was taken and people kept coming in.

Barbara, who chairs the library’s friends, said: “If you sit here and listen there’s a bit of a buzz,” adding: “There was a constant stream of people on Sunday. It’s been a long time since it closed. It’s amazing and it would be lovely to see kids borrowing books in the library again.

“It will offer a warm place for people to come. Somewhere that is free to walk into and somewhere that people can get together because there’s a lot of lonely people out there. People need people.”

Despite the swarm of customers, Ian McGinn from BAKED, said: “It’s nothing we couldn’t handle, contain or overcome. The customers have been really positive and a lot of the customers are coming for the library and say “what, there’s a cafe here as well?” Each section will feed each other. It really does have a hub feel

“People are walking in and going “blimey.” Though we have a good reputation already, people are walking in and thinking this is quite snazzy. When we have our proper fancy kitchen, people will say this is the gold standard.”

Jacqueline Derbyshire heard about the new library on Facebook and visited to donate some of her book series, the Roadside Fairies. She told the LDRS: “It’s absolutely amazing. When I walked in, I was like wow,” adding: “When I was a child, I spent so much time in the library and that was where we found our excitement in books. That is what it is all about. Getting children excited about going back into these spaces.”

Wallasey councillor Ian Lewis is one of the trustees of the new library and has worked to see it reopen. This week, he had been collecting books donated by councillors as well as council officers for the new space.

He said: “It makes me really optimistic about its future. The support we have had has been phenomenal. Every time we go out, people ask “when is the library opening,” adding: “As time has gone on, the amount of community support has only confirmed that we were right to do it. We didn’t know to begin with that the community would run with it.”