This week we hear from independent researcher Danny Friar, who offers a brilliant and sensitively-researched excavation of the Georgian era, revealing fragments of a hidden, but universal, history… Ten years ago a discussion of the Georgian period may have brought up names such as Lord Horatio Nelson, Captain James Cook, William Wilberforce and Jane Austen….
Search Results for: yorkshire
Slavery in Yorkshire
This week on the blog we hear from Library Officer Ruairí Lewis about a heated debate between two leading local men in the early 19th-century… In 1830, the ‘Tory Radical’ Richard Oastler sent an open letter to the Leeds Mercury, owned and edited by prominent Leeds liberal Edward Baines (1774-1848), entitled ‘Slavery in Yorkshire’. Oastler…
Christmas-Morning Carols by Children in Yorkshire
It’s day 13 of our Advent Calendar and Senior Librarian, Louise Birch is returning for a second visit to Robert Chambers ‘The Book of Day: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities in Connection with the Calendar, Including Anecdote, Biography, & History, Curiosities of Literature and Oddities of Human Life and Character.’ Vol. 2 (1864). We’ll leave…
Hard workers, not burdens: Disabled and Deaf mill workers in Yorkshire
This week we hear from artist Gill Crawshaw, who has been delving into the Central Library archives to uncover the hidden history of disability and West Yorkshire’s textile heritage. The article is published to mark the start of UK Disability History Month, which began on November 18. A few years ago, I became interested in…
Yorkshire Battles: The Battle of Selby, 1644
This week Josh Flint from the Local and Family History department will be using the Research Guide on Yorkshire Battles to examine the importance of the Battle of Selby, fought on the 11th April 1644. The Battle of Selby saw Lord Fairfax and his victorious Parliamentarian army signal the beginning of the end of the Royalists…
Alan Bennett and Yorkshire
This week we hear from Dr Kara McKechnie, lecturer in Dramaturgy at the University of Leeds who writes for us on Alan Bennett and Yorkshire. Alan Bennett’s Yorkshire is not one of beautiful countryside, proud civic architecture and quaint rows of red brick houses. In his memories, it is a landscape with very little colour…
Cross-dressing in Yorkshire
This week we welcome guest writer Lauren Wells, Post-Graduate Researcher at the University of Leeds, who explores the history and meaning(s) of cross-dressing in Yorkshire… My research examines men who cross-dressed in Yorkshire from the end of the nineteenth century until the eve of the Second World War. When I first conceptualised this project, I…
Yorkshire Battles: Battle of Wakefield, 1460
This week Josh Flint from the Local and Family History Department will be using the new Research Guide on Yorkshire Battles to examine the fascinating Battle of Wakefield in 1460 which saw the death of Richard, Duke of York and has been argued to have changed the course of English History while also highlighting the exceptional items…
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