The second part of guest author Tony Scaife‘s series on the Leeds Mechanics Institute, sourced from books and other resources available in the Local Studies & Research department at the Central Library. Part I can be found here. Earlier we have seen how, in 1824, the leading citizens of the town planned to create the…
Category: Leeds History
A Day of Marches & Demonstrations
Librarian Louise Birch uses photographs from the Leodis archive to remember events that took place 50 years ago today. 5th February 1972 was a day of marches and demonstrations in the city of Leeds. Using images from the Leodis website we will take a look at the marches and their causes. Over 500 people took…
A Brief History of Coffee in Leeds
Two coffee venues feature as entries on the Edible Leeds heritage trail, at numbers 4 and 20. Librarian Antony Ramm offers a very brief overview of those locations, bringing the story up to date with a more modern addition… We at the Secret Library don’t know exactly when the first coffee house in Leeds opened…
The Mechanics’ Institute: Part I – Cultivating Minds
We hear from regular guest author Tony Scaife on the Secret Library this week. This is the first of a series on the Leeds Mechanics Institute, sourced from books and other resources available in the Local Studies & Research department at the Central Library… When I first moved to Leeds, I was struck by how…
A Brief History of Leeds #3: The 17th-century
The third in a series of articles exploring the history of Leeds, using books and other stock resources held in the Leeds Libraries collections. For all the entries in this series, see our dedicated page. In our previous entry in this series, we briefly touched on the emergence of Leeds as a textile market centre…
Family Allowance Toy Fair
by Louise Birch Day 7 of our Advent Calendar is all about Christmas Shopping. there is a commercial side to Christmas that many dislike, for some this is due to the affordability of gifts. Today’s entry recalls a toy fair that addressed this. These images show the annual Wykebeck ‘Family allowance Toy Fair’. Local residents…
A Gledhow Military Hospital Christmas
Day 4 of our Advent Calendar brings us to the Christmas Celebrations at Gledhow Military Hospital. During the First World War, Gledhow Hall was offered for use as a Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) hospital and run by the British Red Cross. This first image from 1917 shows one of the small huts in the grounds…
Christmas Pudding
Day 2 of our Heritage & Special Collections Advent Calendar. Today librarian Helen Skilbeck has a Christmas Pudding recipe for you. Please let us know if you give it a go. The Leeds company Goodall, Backhouse and Co. produced a range of ‘household specialities’ including Yorkshire Relish, egg and custard powder, ginger beer powder, quinine…
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