Basinghall Telephone Exchange

This week’s post is a request from one of our customers – see the poster below for more information. You can contact us on 0113 37 86982 or via localandfamilyhistory@leeds.gov.uk and we can pass your message to the customer.

Mortuary Chapels of Beckett Street Cemetery

This week we welcome back Jeanette B from the Friends of Beckett Street Cemetery group, this time for a brief history of the Chapels at Beckett Street Cemetery – and a request for reader assistance… More information : Public cemetery covering an area of 6.5 hectares. It was established in 1845 and was one of the earliest…

A Snowy Day in Bardsey

They say April is the cruellest month, but we reckon it’s March. Getting January and February out of the way can give the misleading comfort of thinking Winter has been and gone…only for March’s revenge: wind, rain, and, of course, snow: the dreaded Fool’s (or False) Spring. What weather will the rest of this March…

The 1921 census is now on Ancestry

Today we are rejoicing in Local and Family History because the 1921 census is available on Ancestry!  Regular readers will know that you can use Ancestry for free at any Leeds Library as part of our digital offering.  Here’s some reasons why you should be excited about the 1921 census too. It reflects changes in…

A Brief Tour of Clarendon Road

This week Librarian Antony Ramm offers a very short tour of Clarendon Road in Little Woodhouse, based on a walk delivered to library staff on Monday November 25 2024. Some of this article and tour is based on information posted in a previous blog post about Little Woodhouse, and relies heavily on details given to…

Black History Month: Leeds United’s first Black footballer

This week we welcome guest author Pete Slater. Pete is one of a small team of volunteers working on a project based on football fandom. He traced the following story during his research using our local newspaper archive, as part of that project work. We publish this piece as part of Black History Month. For…

350 years of worship and rebellion: A timeline of the history of Mill Hill

This week we welcome Leeds Beckett University student Emma Hays, who reports on a recent local history project based on resources in our Local and Family History department…The launch of the accompanying resource is at 1.30pm on October 31 at the Mill Hill Chapel (next to City Square). Mill Hill Chapel was founded in 1674…