John Rylands Library I listed status in 1994, is maintained by the University of Manchester and open for library readers and visitors. Enriqueta Rylands purchased a site on Deansgate for her memorial library in 1889 and commissioned a design from architect Basil Champneys. Rylands commissioned the Manchester academic Alice Cooke to index the vast library of the 2nd Earl Spencer which she had purchased and another collection of autographs. Mrs Rylands intended the library to be principally theological, and the building, which is a fine example of Victorian Gothic, has the appearance of a church, although the concept was of an Oxford college
Rylands v Fletcher by "Rylands". Subsequently, "Transco" disapproved of the Australian decision in "Burnie Port Authority v General Jones Pty Ltd" to absorb "Rylands" into the general law of negligence, deciding that "Rylands" should continue to exist but, as Lord Bingham said, as a "sub-species of nuisance...while insisting upon its essential nature and purpose; and...restate it so as to achieve as much certainty and clarity as is attainable". It is now a sub-tort, rather than an independent tort; they have confirmed that it will be allowed to remain. Donal Nolan has argued that to consider "Rylands" as part of private nuisance is unsound.