It’s Volunteers’ Week 2025 (June 2 – June 8): a chance to celebrate the amazing achievements of our current team of heritage volunteers. Read on for some highlights from the last 12-months! Print collectionSeveral of our heritage volunteers, a student placement and a Duke of Edinburgh volunteer have all been busy working on our print…
Category: Child Friendly
Unearthing Spark: A Student Archivist’s Experience at Leeds Central Library
This week we hear from guest author Lauren Stead, who has been investigating in more detail one of our Central Library’s major collections… As a history student, I believe the most exciting element of research is working with primary sources. By looking at material created by and for people in the past, a deeper understanding…
Municipal Bedrooms
This week Antony Ramm takes a brief tour around the bedrooms of Leeds… I was recently playing around with the Pot Luck feature on our Leodis image archive (www.leodis.net) to find inspiration for a blog article. (Do try the Pot Luck tool if you’ve not used it before!) One image that instantly stood out of…
Why The Golden Beam?
This week we welcome back Library and Digital Assistant Jan Pinder, who finds the answer to a question in the artistry of a local legend… Why was the newest Wetherspoons in Leeds named The Golden Beam? Opened on June 8 2021 it seems a curious name choice for a pub, particularly considering that many of…
The mountain, the logbook, and the wickedest man in the world: early days of the climbing scene
This week we welcome back Library and Digital Assistant Joey Talbot, who explores the fascinating history of climbing in the Leeds Libraries collections… During April, we’re holding a display of climbing and mountaineering related materials in the Local and Family History Library, and to tie into that I’m bringing you a little taste of the…
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 Secret Library | Leeds Libraries Heritage Blog 