The Upper Reading Room of the Old Library reopened to readers on Monday 16 February, fourteen months after it closed for repairs to its roof. Contractors replaced 38 tonnes of lead, rebuilt part of the timber lantern above the reading room and repaired the plaster of the ceiling, which had been damaged by water during the storms of the 2024–25 winter.
While the room was closed, the 31,000 volumes of the gallery shelves, most of them from the Academy’s seventeenth and eighteenth-century collections, were cleaned and checked one by one. Conservators found 412 volumes needing repair; 380 are back on the shelves and the rest will follow by the summer.
The work cost £2.9 million, of which £1.1 million came from gifts by alumni and two charitable trusts. The reading room’s new lighting uses about a fifth of the electricity of the old.