Your library is doing very well!

Forest Hill became a community library in October 2016. Since then it has been on an upward trajectory. In 2024 the library issued 108,250 books almost double the 54,523 issues in 2017. This is a remarkable achievement against a national picture of decline. Forest Hill is now the busiest of Lewisham’s community libraries.

Forest Hill Library's impressive entrance

Inevitably, the pandemic interrupted progress, but the number of visitors to the library has increased year on year since then. In 2024 Forest Hill Library registered 110,872 visits, just shy of the 113,567 recorded in 2019. Across Lewisham, if multi-use sites such as Downham and Deptford are excluded, only the new council-run library in Catford received more visits last year.

This success is due in no small measure to the volunteers who have manned the library, its manager Stephen Bruce and the leadership of Calico Projects, the charitable trust that now runs Forest Hill, Sydenham, Crofton Park and Manor House libraries.

And of course, a big thank you goes to the people of Forest Hill, in particular its younger contingent – the majority of book borrowing is by children!  It was their interests that was a primary motivation behind the community coming together in 2016 to save the library. It’s great to see the number of children signing up once again for the Summer Reading Challenge, a national initiative that encourages children to read during the summer break.