A blaze which tore through Norwich Central Library one August morning in 1994 destroyed thousands of historic documents and more than 100,000 books.
It also caused the loss of records of what the library had once contained.
However, one rare guide to its early holdings is to be found in A New Catalogue of Books in the Publick Library of the City of Norwich. Published locally in 1732, Benjamin Mackerell’s 54pp catalogue also contains an account of ‘Mr John Fitzpatrick’s Roman and other Coins’.