VE Day 80th Anniversary

To commemorate the 80th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, Leeds Libraries have created a gallery of photographs on Leodis, our online photographic archive, showing how the people of Leeds celebrated both VE and VJ Day. But we feel sure there are more images out there so are inviting anyone who may have their own…

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…

Leeds United and the Myth of the White Strip

This week we welcome back guest author Pete Slater. Pete is one of a small team of volunteers working with us for the joint Leeds Libraries/British Libraries Voice of the Fans exhibition celebrating football fanzines and football fan culture. One of Pete’s roles has been research using our microfilmed local newspaper collection – this article…

The Chimney Corner: Secret Books from the Secret Library #10

The latest in an occasionally-regular series exploring books and other items selected from our vast collections. In this entry Librarian Antony Ramm looks at a collection of materials illuminating a late 18th century election in Yorkshire… Our previous entry in this series looked at a slim 18th century volume of Yorkshire topography. In this current article we remain in 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…