Leeds Libraries

The Majestic remembered

Following the events this week at the Majestic we thought we would share some of our photographs from the early days as a cinema. All photographs are from our Leodis website. The Majestic was built on the site of the former recruiting office used during the First World War. This image from 5th October 1919…

George Corson, leaving his mark on Leeds

Today we bring you the architect and designer of our 1884 Municipal Buildings, George Corson. Born in Dumfries, Scotland, George like his older brother William, trained under Scottish architect Walter Newall. George followed his brother to Leeds, where on the 1851 census aged 21 and 28 they are registered as living at Number 21 Lyddon…

Beryl Gott and the Gott Bequest

By Library and Digital Assistant, Philip Wilde In volume 10 of our copy of ‘The Northern Gardener’ published in 1956, there is an article by Kenneth Lemmon, the Honorary Editor, which says of the Gott Collection in Leeds Central Library ,’I cannot think of another such collection outside the R.H.S. Lindley Library or the British…

Celebrating 80 years of the Children’s Library

This year is the 80th year that the children of Leeds have had a ground floor library at Leeds Central Library. Until then the junior stock was part of the lending stock that was housed on the second floor, where the Art Library is today. In 1934 the Central Library had a refurbishment and the…

A ‘Little’ Journey

London, Switzerland, Germany… What do all these places have in common? The answer is: you can find them all within the Leeds-Bradford area. Today we thought we’d take a little journey through Europe, Secret Library style. We’ll start in the well-known Leeds suburb of Little London, before calling in on the city’s other Little London,…