This week’s post is by Tony Scaife, a Heritage Volunteer based at the Local and Family History Library. He’s been indexing volumes of The Palm, the magazine of the old Leeds Central High School, which inspired him to delve a little deeper into the city’s early radio days… In 1901, the groundbreaking Central High School (CHS)…
Category: Leeds History
Christmas and New Year in the Territorial Hospitals, 1917
by Ross Horsley, Local and Family History, Leeds Central Library Within three months of the outbreak of the First World War, Leeds had already seen its first influx of injured soldiers. These made their way to Beckett’s Park to what would become the city’s largest military care centre, the 2nd Northern General Hospital. At its…
An Armley Ghost Story for Christmas
by Ross Horsley, Local and Family History, Leeds Central Library “The ghost that turns up, annually, on the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve is largely the invention of Charles Dickens and his imitators in fiction. But ghosts do prefer to visit their familiar haunts on dark winter nights – and, for some, Christmas appears…
Unexpected Perspectives #5
by Ross Horsley, Local and Family History, Leeds Central Library There are plenty of reasons to visit the Carriageworks Theatre on Millennium Square this month, the main one being that their production of Aladdin, the city’s only traditional pantomime, begins on Friday and runs right through to 9 January. Another reason is to take advantage of…
Unexpected Perspectives #4
by Ross Horsley, Local and Family History, Leeds Central Library Now that the remodeling work has finished on the new sandwich shop, Simply Eat, next-door to the traditional Headrow pub, the Horse and Trumpet, it’s safe to once again poke your nose through that rather arty circular gate to the rear of the City Varieties Music Hall….
Unexpected Perspectives #3
by Ross Horsley, Local and Family History, Leeds Central Library We’re back causing trouble in city centre shops again this week, squeezing ourselves around an upstairs window display to get an elevated view of one of Leeds’s busiest retail routes, Briggate. You’ll need to ride the escalator or lift to the first floor of clothes shop…
Black History Month: A Brief History of the African-Caribbean Community in Leeds
by Antony Ramm, Local and Family History, Leeds Central Library Since the publication of this article on the 16th of October, 2015, new research has been undertaken, which takes the story into the 1980s. A BA dissertation by Tom Woolmore, a student at Queen’s University in Belfast, entitled “Keep On Moving: Black Responses to Racism and…
Unexpected Perspectives #2
By Ross Horsley, Local and Family History, Leeds Central Library Now is the time to wander down to the West Yorkshire Playhouse and take advantage of a relatively unobstructed view straight up Eastgate to the Headrow. Once the new multi-storey car park of the currently under-construction Victoria Gate shopping centre is complete (it’s due to…
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