Librarian Antony Ramm takes a brief look at a lesser-known view of Leeds in the 18th-century… Eighteenth-century Leeds suffers slightly, perhaps, in the popular mind-set, sandwiched between a 19th-century more obviously traceable in its effects on the built environment of the city, and a seventeenth-century with more viscerally thrilling episodes and dominant personalities. While much good…
Category: Leeds History
The Vote Before the Vote
This week, local author Chris Nickson and curator of 2018 exhibition The Vote Before the Vote, tells us more about some important, but relatively unknown women of Leeds. Right at the start of the era, in 1832, Mary Smith of Stanmore, Yorkshire, which is believed to be a property very close to today’s Cottage Road…
Leeds International Exhibition, 1890
Librarian Antony Ramm takes a brief look at the Leeds International Exhibition of 1890, a spectacular showcase with a sad ending… International exhibitions made a frequent appearance in Europe and the United States during the second half of the 19th-century, providing “nations with opportunities to demonstrate their artistic, technical and scientific ingenuity.” Among the most…
Can You Help? On the Trail of a WWII Soldier from Leeds
This week we hear from Dirk Paagman, who is searching for a photograph and further details about William George McClelland, a Leeds soldier who died during World War II. Dirk got in touch with us at the Local and Family History department to see if we could find anything in the local newspapers of the…
Tales from Circus 250: A Topography of the Circus in Leeds, Part I
To mark the 250th-anniversary of Philip Astley’s leap into show-business with his ring of entertainments near to Waterloo in London, the Secret Library presents a short series of stories from the glory days of the Circus in Leeds and the surrounding area. NEW BRIGGATE Charles Adams opened his Grand Circus on the site in New…
Do You Remember Hunslet Grange Housing Estate?
This week we hear from Louise Dwyer and Gill Crawshaw, MA students at the Leeds Arts University. Louise and Gill wo researched the history and legacy of the Hunslet Grange estate (aka Leek Street flats). Read on to find out more about their research and how they used Leeds Libraries resources. Our current research focuses…
Xin Nian Kuai Le!
As we welcome in the Year of the Dog, librarian Ross Horsley looks back over some of the ways Leeds Libraries has worked with the city’s Chinese community over the past twelve months, exploring local history in what was the Year of the Rooster. The Leeds Is My Home project is a collaboration between Leeds…
People of Leeds #1: Sam, the Newsman
The first in an occasional series looking at forgotten contributors to the history of Leeds. This week, Librarian Antony Ramm tells the story of 19th-century newsagent Samuel Schofield, better known to contemporaries as ‘Sam, the Newsman’… There was once a time – not so very long ago – when visitors to the centre of Leeds…
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