Day 16 of our Heritage Advent Calendar is brought to you by Rhian Isaac, Senior Librarian for Special Collections. In 1968 Sir Alvary Gascoigne donated to Leeds Libraries, a collection of over 3000 books, pamphlets and periodicalsin memory of his father, Colonel F.R.T. Gascoigne, of Lotherton Hall. The Gascoigne Collection mostly includes items relating to military…
Category: Heritage Advent Calendar
Anyone fancy a game of Snapdragon?
Day 15 of our Heritage Advent Calendar brings our penultimate visit to Chambers’ Book of Days, and with it an entry we recommend you DO NOT try at home. Today we’re looking at one party game in particular, Snap Dragon. We’ll let Chambers explain in his own words. “A quantity of raisins are deposited in…
How to Research Christmas
By Antony Ramm, Librarian It’s Day 14 of the Heritage Advent Calendar, and it’s time to look into the history of Christmas. Even Christmas – that eternal day of uniformity – has a history; a history of why people have celebrated Christmas and a history of how people have celebrated Christmas, both changing through time….
Christmas-Morning Carols by Children in Yorkshire
It’s day 13 of our Advent Calendar and Senior Librarian, Louise Birch is returning for a second visit to Robert Chambers ‘The Book of Day: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities in Connection with the Calendar, Including Anecdote, Biography, & History, Curiosities of Literature and Oddities of Human Life and Character.’ Vol. 2 (1864). We’ll leave…
Lewis’s Picture Perfect Windows
For Day 12 of our Advent Calendar, Senior Librarian Louise Birch looks at the closest thing Leeds had to the store from the movie Miracle on 34th Street. Lewis’s department store opened in 1932 on the widened Headrow. Every Christmas Lewis’s provided beautiful Christmas displays, becoming citywide legendary in the 1970s and 80s. This displays…
Turkey by Moxon
Time to start thinking about how you’re going to cook that turkey. Luckily for you our Librarian, Helen Skilbeck, is back on day 11 of our Advent Calendar with more Christmas recipes from the Local Studies collections. Elizabeth Moxon was a writer on cookery and is known chiefly for her sole publication, ‘English Housewifry, Exemplified…
Vogue – The Christmas Issue
It’s Day 10 and we really need to start thinking about those Christmas outfits, Jude Ramm, Library & Digital Assistant has been raiding the Art Library closet for something a little bit glam. This Christmas 1958 edition of the ever-glamorous Vogue is billed as the “Young Idea party portfolio” (possible title of my biography?). It…
Any Mummers Allowed In?
It’s day 9 of our Advent Calendar and today Senior Librarian Louise Birch will take us on our first visit to Robert Chambers ‘The Book of Day: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities in Connection with the Calendar, Including Anecdote, Biography, & History, Curiosities of Literature and Oddities of Human Life and Character.’ Vol. 2 (1864)…
The Secret Library | Leeds Libraries Heritage Blog 