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… Thomas Green’s Coffee House We at the Secret Library don’t know exactly when the first coffee…
Author: Leeds Libraries
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…
Botanicals of the Winter Solstice
It’s day 21 of our Heritage Advent calendar and also the Winter Solstice, to celebrate we’re delving deep into a very beautiful item from our Special Collections. Some of our favourite winter plants can be found in the beautifully illustrated encyclopaedia of trees Sylvan Musings, or, The Spirit of the Woods (1849)by Leeds botanist and…
A Christmas Carol Playbills
Following on from yesterday’s great post about the first publication of A Christmas Carol, today, for day 20 of the Heritage Advent Calendar, we bring you the playbills of the show as it appeared historically in Leeds. These playbills are part of our playbill collection, and available to view online at leodis.net Charles Dicken’s ‘A…
A Christmas Carol and the Ghosts of Christmas
By Rhian Isaac, Senior Librarian for Special Collections A perfect Christmas treat for day 19 is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens which was published on this day, in 1843. The cold, dark winter nights have always invited the sharing of supernatural tales and Christmas has long been associated with ghosts. However, the telling of…
The Infant Prodigy Master Herbert – It’s Panto Season
By Becky Bavill, Library and Digital Assistant For Day 19 we’ve got more Pantomimes for you with another entry from our Playbills collection which can be viewed on the Leodis.net website. At Christmas, many families enjoy seeing a show. On Tuesday 21st and Thursday 23rd December 1830 they could have gone to the Concert Room…
