The first week of June is Volunteers’ Week – an annual celebration of the contribution millions of people make across the UK through volunteering in their communities.

We want to celebrate (and thank profusely) our very own Heritage Volunteers who have been beavering away at various tasks in the Local and Family History Library for the past year.

We hear from a couple of them who tell us about the kind of work they have been undertaking.

Jeanette has been a volunteer for some time in Leeds Libraries and has taken on several tasks in that time:

‘The work I have been completing for the libraries consists of reviewing letters about the Leeds Flag Days held during the First World War to raise funds for a variety of causes. It has been fascinating to discover the range of groups who benefited from these funds including Comforts for ‘Leeds Lads at the Front’, ‘Sailors and Minesweepers’ and ‘Blinded Sailors and Soldiers’. Charities at home were also supported such as Leeds Children’s Charities and the Lord Mayor’s Local fund for ‘dependents of Soldiers’.

The letters I reviewed demonstrated that the Flag Days which included street collections, were also supported by collections on the trams and within theatres and cinemas and obviously a lot of time and effort by many people.

In conclusion it has been a small but interesting insight into this period of time in Leeds.

I also have been involved with the identification of photos on the Leodis website, given a description of the photo and trying to find it on the site, this is a continuation of a task that many others have contributed to and for me continued through lockdown. It’s really unbelievable both how many and the range of photos the library has of Leeds and what you discover – for example I never knew Leeds had a Revolution Well.’

Volunteer Andy has been working on Leeds City Council documents. He explains:

“I joined the library as a volunteer last autumn and opted to help search through the vast collection of material produced by Leeds City Council in the last 200 years. Currently, there are nearly 2,000 index cards which reference the material held by the library, and these cards have been put into a spreadsheet.  My role is to review the catalogues and physical papers and to bring some structure to them and to produce a research guide.  So far, I have reviewed all the papers related to Parking, Roads and Travel. It’s a fascinating insight into how the Council’s role has developed and changed as the city has expanded and settled. It covers everything from the development of the tramways to the building of motorways, and the more recent unsuccessful plans for a supertram. And buried in all the big events are little snippets that bring it all to life – for example, when the ring road was being built a hundred years ago, the price of some land bought near Pudsey for the road was offset by the sale of the rhubarb bulbs removed from that land. Only in West Yorkshire!”

Another volunteer has been looking at scrapbooks filled with newspaper cuttings about the history of Leeds Libraries. He has been indexing these articles so in future it will be easier for staff and researchers to find out information about the history of Leeds library service.

Other Heritage Volunteers have been tackling the Mary Gawthorpe papers and trying their hand at transcribing some of the handwritten letters included in this collection. Gawthorpe was a teacher, suffragette, trade unionist, socialist and editor. Born in Leeds in 1881, she emigrated to the USA in 1916 and spent the rest of her life in the New York area. After her death, her papers were deposited with the New York University Tamiment Library but Leeds secured copies of these on microfilm. Over the years many researchers have used these papers but some of the correspondence is quite difficult to read. Our volunteers have been transcribing some of the handwritten letters to make it easier to use these documents. Here’s an example of a letter from Gawthorpe to her mother, which is one of the easier ones to read.

Our Heritage Volunteers are continuing to work on opening up our collections and making them more accessible for everyone and we are so grateful to them for all their hard work.

We are currently accepting applications for one additional Heritage Volunteer: to work on an ongoing, long-term project around football and fan culture. If that sounds like it’s of interest to you, please contact us on 0113 37 86982 or localandfamilyhistory@leeds.gov.uk for more information and an application form. All other library volunteer opportunities can be found here or search all Leeds City Council’s volunteering opportunities here.