The Star Looks at Sheffield's Libraries: Why the first few chapters weren't easy in Stannington

The smart, stone building on Uppergate Road faces a stunning countryside view of the Loxley Valley - and it was forged in fire, in a way.

The suburb's original library burned down in an arson attack in 1995, and was replaced before the decade was out, leaving Stannington in the position of owning a relatively new facility when the council handed over more than a dozen venues to volunteers in 2014 to cut costs.

Three years have flown by, says Jenny van Tinteren, chair of trustees at Stannington and District Library Group, the charity formed by the community to manage the local service - but the initial upheaval hasn't been easily forgotten.

The big handover was preceded by a 'year's hard slog' with meetings every week, business cases to prepare and opposition to fend off.

"We had to contend with people saying we were instrumental in doing the Tories' dirty work for them and causing jobs to disappear," says Jenny. "We got a lot of stick."

"'Blue rinse job thieves' was a phrase I remember," trustee Bob Mynors chips in.

On a Monday afternoon the library has been open for just five minutes and users are already through the doors, browsing the shelves and swapping books. The large children's section, which takes up a sizeable chunk of the building's floorspace, is ready for young visitors and refreshments await in the 'coffee corner', which harbours an impressive, hulking beverage machine, rather than the standard kettle and jar of instant.

"We're smaller, so we've got to be a bit more creative," says Bob. "In some ways we were the first out of the blocks."

In any case, library supporters had been 'working up' to take action in 2013, recalls another trustee, Mel Smart.

"There had been rumours. We'd been talking about what we could do to 'save the library'. We thought we couldn't save it from Sheffield Council closing it - but we could save it by being volunteers."

There are around 50 helpers on the books, and from July to September they put in more than 1,900 hours of work, according to the group's calculations. There are also plenty of external events that take people off-site, such as school visits, the Stannington Carnival and the suburb's Story Festival.

There is talk of replacing the computer system, library members can use the wi-fi for free and the charity has amassed a stock of around 4,000 new books, which each carry a yellow sticker. There are now more of these than there are council-provided titles, says Jenny.

"People bring us books without realising that books in a library have a really hard life, so they've got to be really firm and in good condition. When people write stuff about us to the press, which they fairly regularly do, they cite falling numbers of book loans, but we've managed to reverse that with the new books."

Libraries still play a major role in helping people to read, insists deputy treasurer Carole Allen, 'especially with the schools'.

"It exposes children to reading at a young age," she says.

This year Stannington - an 'associate library' which receives some council funding - will get a grant of £9,500 to assist with running costs, based on bills from 2013.

"They've kept our grant at that level. Next year it's going to be 80 per cent of that, and the year after it'll be 70 per cent. We've got no certainty at all as to whether we'll get any sort of grant from 2020 onwards," says Jenny. "What there might be is stuff that it doesn't cost the council anything to provide. We might still have the library management system, and the building, and the books - but no new books."

It costs more than £15,000 a year to run the library - friends of the service can subscribe and make a standing contribution.

"At the moment we've found the fundraising we do raises about half of what we'd need to run a good library," says Jenny.