Enriqueta Augustina Rylands supporters of the Library and unveiled on 9 December 1907, a few months before her death. In later life she was affected by rheumatic symptoms and spent frequent periods convalescing overseas. In 1894, she purchased a villa in Torquay where she died 14 years later on 4 February 1908. Following her funeral in Stretford, Manchester, she was cremated and the ashes interred in the vault where her husband had been buried twenty years earlier in the Southern Cemetery, Manchester. Enriqueta Augustina Rylands Enriqueta Augustina Rylands (31 May 1843 – 4 February 1908) was an Anglo-Cuban philanthropist who founded the John
John Rylands Library Scottish and two Irish universities and those of Owens College. On either side of the entrance portal are square two-storey two-bay wings with plain walls with a string course containing grotesques and large octagonal lanterns. Behind the entrance portal flanked by square towers is the three-light east window of the reading hall. It has reticulated tracery and shafts in a similar style to the parapet. In front of the library are Art Nouveau bronze railings with central double gates and lamp standards. The main reading room on the first floor, 30 feet above the ground and 12 feet from all