celebrating the bicentenary of the opening of the Signet Library 1822-2022

2022 sees the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Signet Library in Edinburgh’s Parliament Square. Over two centuries, the WS Society’s magnificent headquarters has been one of the great centres of Scotland’s legal and cultural life. Marking the occasion across the year, we will hold a series of exhibitions and events to highlight different aspects of the building’s role in national life. It is fitting that we mark the bicentenary in this, the Society's first full year as a Scottish registered charity (SC050987); and as we set out our ambitions for the next 200 years.

The grand opening of the Signet Library building is linked to its use during King George IV’s visit to Edinburgh in August 1822. The king used the Upper Library as a reception room prior to the great banquet held in his honour in neighbouring Parliament Hall. On seeing the room, the king reportedly declared it “the most beautiful drawing room in Europe.”

August 2022 also marks the 75th anniversary of the birth of the Edinburgh International Festival, and we are delighted to share in the celebrations at the Signet Library in a joint event with a man who is undoubtedly one of the great figures in European and Scottish art, Richard Demarco.

To mark 200 years since George IV’s visit to Scotland’s capital, the Society will stage a public lecture on the evening of 1 September 2022, Identity, Imagination and George IV in Edinburgh, 1822.

With the lifting of Covid restrictions, the WS Society’s Annual Dinner returns on 11 November 2022.

Throughout the year, from March onwards, the bicentenary will be marked with an online exhibition which will build up month by month, focussing on aspects of Signet Library history and collecting and with a series of new digitisations of important manuscripts from the Signet Library’s collections.