Have you ever wanted to know more about the heritage of our fabulous Central Library building or fancied looking behind the scenes? We are now offering bookable heritage tours around the building showing you how it has changed over the years and letting you see parts not usually accessible to the public. To whet your…
Category: Events
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…
Read More: Marking the Centenary of World War I
by Antony Ramm, Information and Research, Central Library This is an entry in our Read More series. These are ‘long-form’ articles, where staff offer a curated and detailed look at areas of our book collections, usually based around a specific theme or subject. These posts aim to guide the interested reader through to those books that offer a…
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…
Mad about cycling!
As Saturday 5th July 2014 sees the City of Leeds host Le Grand Départ, the start of the world famous Tour de France, we would like to highlight some of our numerous items relating to cycling, some from our special collections and some loanable. ‘Personal best : the autobiography of Beryl Burton’ celebrates a Leeds…
Celebrating the Yorkshire Festival
As part of the 2014 Yorkshire Festival we wanted to show you some of the Heritage Yorkshire stock we have here at Leeds Central Library. ‘Yorkshire Painted & Described’ by Gordon Home was acquired by the Leeds Public Libraries Reference Library on the 9th June 1956 with 71 illustrations accompanying Home’s description of his tour…
Shakespeare 450
April 23rd 2014 marks the 450th year of Shakespeare’s birth and here at Leeds Central Library we intend to do the anniversary justice with a celebration or two. With hundreds of copies of the Bard’s work in stock we wanted to show off some of our heritage Shakespeare stock not usually seen by the public….
International Women’s Day and Suffrage in Leeds
In celebration of International Women’s Day and the anniversary of a Leeds suffragette and socialist we are highlighting the Mary Gawthorpe collection and other Leeds Library Collections documenting women’s suffrage in Leeds. Born January 12th, 1881 in the Woodhouse area of Leeds, Mary Gawthorpe was the middle of 5 children to John and Anne, a…
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