No chairs, no desks, no computers, no phones. Just newspapers and quiet thoughts.

This was the scene inside the new newspaper room at the Southend Public Library in September 1927.

The library had just undergone extensions to improve the main hall with a new children’s section and the newspaper room.

The photograph, from the Southend Pictorial Newspaper, shows some of the first people inside the new library.

The library had been opened in 1905 and was in the building now home to Southend Central Museum.

The Edwardian building has been transformed into a public library thanks to a £8,000 fund paid for by the Andrew Carnegie Trust and designed by Henry Hare, who also designed Southend’s Technical College.

The library remained in this building until it closed in 1974.