This week’s post is written by Geoff Carter. Geoff has also kindly loaned items belonging to Allen Rowley to our 2022 Breaking the News exhibition and donated some incredible 18th century newspapers to our permanent collection. Allen Rowley was born at Thornhill, Dewsbury, and as a nephew of the village newsagent, started delivering the Yorkshire…
Author: Leeds Libraries
LGBT+ History Month: Research Guide
To tie in with LGBT+ History Month, the Local and Family History Library have created a new research guide with some of the most relevant items of stock for anyone researching the history of LGBT+ Leeds. This weeks blog looks at some of the items in more depth. West Yorkshire Queer Stories was a project…
The Mechanics’ Institute: Part II – “Commensurate with the growing intelligence and prosperity of the people.”
The second part of guest author Tony Scaife‘s series on the Leeds Mechanics Institute, sourced from books and other resources available in the Local Studies & Research department at the Central Library. Part I can be found here. Earlier we have seen how, in 1824, the leading citizens of the town planned to create the…
Rare Books Round Up – Big Garden Birdwatch Edition
Each week our Collections Manager Rhian, brings you our ‘Rare Book of the Week’ on our social media accounts, too good to be lost in the daily deluge of tweets and Instagrams we wanted to bring you a round-up of some of our favourites. This week it’s the turn of Birds. This weekend marks the…
A Brief History of Coffee in Leeds
Two coffee venues feature as entries on the Edible Leeds heritage trail, at numbers 4 and 20. Librarian Antony Ramm offers a very brief overview of those locations, bringing the story up to date with a more modern addition… We at the Secret Library don’t know exactly when the first coffee house in Leeds opened…
The Mechanics’ Institute: Part I – Cultivating Minds
We hear from regular guest author Tony Scaife on the Secret Library this week. This is the first of a series on the Leeds Mechanics Institute, sourced from books and other resources available in the Local Studies & Research department at the Central Library… When I first moved to Leeds, I was struck by how…
A Brief History of Leeds #3: The 17th-century
The third in a series of articles exploring the history of Leeds, using books and other stock resources held in the Leeds Libraries collections. For all the entries in this series, see our dedicated page. In our previous entry in this series, we briefly touched on the emergence of Leeds as a textile market centre…
Heritage Advent Calendar: Dec 24
Our final Advent Calendar entry comes courtesy of Librarian, Antony Ramm and a notable match played at Elland Road. While Christmas Day football has a long and venerable history in England, there hasn’t been a top-flight match played on that day of seasonal festivities since Blackpool beat Blackburn Rovers 4-2 in 1965. Those days are…
The Secret Library | Leeds Libraries Heritage Blog 