John Rylands Library pitched roof over its reinforced concrete roof. Champneys designed a pitched roof but Mrs Rylands was advised that an internal stone vault would reduce the fire risk and it was not built. The £17 million project was completed by summer 2007 and the library reopened on 20 September 2007. By the nineteenth century Manchester was a prosperous industrial town and the demands of cotton manufacturing stimulated the growth of engineering and chemical industries. The town became 'abominably filthy' and was 'often covered, especially during the winter, with dense fogs ... there is at all times a copious descent of soots
John Rylands Library known of the early history of this copy of the Gutenberg Bible before it was acquired by the 2nd Earl Spencer. The library houses papyrus fragments known as the Rylands Papyri and documents from North Africa. The most notable are the "St John Fragment", believed to be the oldest extant New Testament text, Rylands Library Papyrus P52, the earliest fragment of the text of the canonical Gospel of John; the earliest fragment of the Septuagint, Papyrus Rylands 458; and Papyrus Rylands 463, a manuscript fragment of the apocryphal Gospel of Mary. Minuscule 702, ε2010 (von Soden), is a Greek minuscule