For fans of the ‘Leeds in Your Lunch Hour’ series you’ll be glad to hear that Leeds Civic Trust have brought them back for 2021 as a series of online talks hosted jointly with Leeds Minster. February’s series is delivered by Dr Kevin Grady, Leeds Historian and former director the Leeds Civic Trust, and what that gentleman doesn’t know about Leeds history I’m really not sure is worth knowing.
‘Invention, Acumen and Espionage’: The Industrial Revolution in Leeds, 1780-1845
Wednesday, 3rd February 2021, 1pm
In the heady days of the Industrial Revolution in Leeds, people stopped at nothing to steal the secrets of the industrial processes which were generating great wealth. This lecture focuses on the creation of Leeds’s three most famous early factories: Benjamin Gott’s Park Mills; Matthew Murray’s Round Foundry and John Marshall’s Temple Mill.
This talk has now passed but a video can be viewed on YouTube
Invention Espionage and Acumen Industrial Revolution – YouTube
Check out our Discovering Leeds site for a history of the origins and development of Industrial Leeds.
‘Grand Emporium’ – The Market Halls and Exchanges of Victorian Leeds
In the nineteenth-century Leeds became a great Victorian city and a diversified centre of commerce and industry requiring specialist buildings for the sale of produce, commodities and trading in stocks and shares. These included retail and wholesale market halls, bazaars, cloth halls, corn exchanges, a Stock Market, two merchant exchanges, a leather market, and a wholesale meat market. The lecture describes these fine Victorian buildings which almost all sadly have been long since demolished.
This talk has now passed but a video of the full talk is available to view on YouTube
(1) Grand Emporium: the market halls and exchanges of Victorian Leeds – YouTube
Our Discovering Leeds site has a whole section about the development of the Leeds Markets.
‘The Grandest Street in Victoria Leeds’: The History of Boar Lane
Wednesday, 17th February 2021, 1pm
Because of it spectacularly rapid growth in the first half of the nineteenth century, the streetscape of central Leeds developed in a very haphazard fashion. Historically Boar Lane was perhaps the town’s most exclusive street, but it too lacked a coherent façade. Dr Kevin Grady’s third ‘Leeds in Your Lunch Hour’ lecture traces the evolution of Boar Lane from the Middle Ages and its transformation in the 1860s into the town’s grandest street.
Click here to register for your free ticket
The Leodis photographic archive holds hundreds of heritage images of Boar Lane, ready to peruse from the comfort of your home.
‘The Age of Flamboyance’: Edwardian Leeds
Wednesday, 24th February 2021, 1pm
The Edwardian period in Leeds stands out as a brief Indian Summer at the close of a century of British political and economic pre-eminence in the world before the First World War. In this final lecture in our ‘Leeds in Your Lunch Hour’ series, Dr Kevin Grady will describe the character of the booming city between 1901 and 1910 – its industry, its transport, the housing of the working and middle classes, education, leisure and entertainment, the notable events, and its new flamboyant architecture.
Click here to register for your free ticket
If you set the decade to 1900s on Leodis you get hundreds of images from Edwardian Leeds including a headless Black Prince and the opening ceremony at City Square.
If any of these subject pique your interest in historical Leeds we have hundreds of resources at the Leeds Central Library, Local & Family History Library and are happy to help with your enquiries.
The Secret Library | Leeds Libraries Heritage Blog 
I remember that area very well my Father worked at Appleyards making swordfish Bi-planes =I used to take his YEPdown every tea time when he was working late