As you wander the staircases of Leeds Central Library you can’t help but notice the lions and dogs carved into the ends of the stair railings. There are various lions and dogs in different poses including one of a lion sitting majestic in a stance reminiscent of the ones guarding the neighbouring Leeds Town Hall…
Category: Child Friendly
Pablo is Coming!
Marking the end of Black History month this week we are sharing three playbills from our collections featuring Pablo Fanque, Britain’s first black circus owner. Born William Darby on 28th February 1796 in Norwich he joined the circus in 1810 as an apprentice to William Batty who owned a small travelling circus. He was known as…
The Great Leeds Book Crisis of 1966
In October 1966 the Leeds City Engineers determined the structure of the Central Library in the Municipal Buildings, in particular the load-carrying beams, were not strong enough to carry the weight imposed by the Reference stock. Within weeks 80,000 volumes were moved from all stack rooms and gallery and stacked upon the library basement floors…
The Leeds Tapestry
During September this year Leeds Central Library had a visit from two year 4 classes from Farsley Springbank Primary School. They came to Central Library to see the Leeds Tapestries, which are housed on the 1st floor in the corridor between the Art Library and the Music Library. The Children’s Librarian spoke to the groups…
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…
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…
Telling the Future in the Past
You might not have needed a fortune teller to predict the country’s performance in some of this summer’s sporting events but, if you’re still looking for a little old-fashioned advice from Destiny, the Local and Family History department at Leeds Central Library can certainly help you out. Mother Shipton’s Wheel of Fortune was printed in…
The Gledhow Hall scrapbook
One fascinating item in our collections is a scrapbook put together by the matron at Gledhow Hall hospital during the First World War. Officially entitled ‘The Great European War’ the scrapbook consists of photographs, newscuttings, letters and ephemera relating to life in the hospital between 1915 and 1919. Gledhow Hall at the time of the…
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