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Quiet please - A low hiss of activity in the Green Library of Longleat.

A crack team of vacuum wielding librarians have been hard at work this week cleaning the 40,000 books accumulated over 500 years in the 7 libraries of Longleat House in Wiltshire.

It takes two teams of four staff 3-15 minutes to delicately hoover the dust from each book using specially adapted low suction vacumn cleaners, and as the library contains over 130 incunabula (books printed before 1500) concentration is vital.

Originating in the 16th century the vast library also contains the first folio of Shakespeare along with the first cookbook written in English (Pynson-1500).

The teams can only access the precious tomes at this time of year when the house is closed to the public during the week.