With the excitement of Chelsea Flower Show this week we thought it timely to give you a glimpse of the fabulous Gott collection housed in the Special Collections at Leeds Central Library. The Gott bequest is a collection of 600 early English gardening books and periodicals including works published in the 16th, 17th and 18th…
Category: Child Friendly
Early Theatre in Leeds
We have a lot of fantastic theatres and entertainment on offer in Leeds now but how did it all start? From our playbills collection you can get an idea of some of the earliest theatre entertainment. The first theatre was built in Leeds in 1771 prior to which Leeds had relied on travelling companies of…
Roll Up, Roll Up, the Circus Comes to Leodis
For those of you feeling like running away to join the circus take a look at the Leodis website, our photographic archive of Leeds, to see the circus visiting the city. First we have 1950s images of crowds flocking to the Bertrum Mills Circus big top on Woodhouse Moor, visible in the sky above is…
Alan Bennett on the Central Library
There is a romance to nostalgia. The fuzzy edges and dog-eared corners of our memories take us back to places we inhabited in our youth. Libraries are no different, especially when aged 129 years. Central Library holds many memories and not just those inside the books. In his 2011 ‘Libraries of a Lifetime’ article, author…
The Secret Library | Leeds Libraries Heritage Blog 