One of the more unusual items amongst our large collection of historical maps at Leeds Central Library goes by the name of ‘Regina v. William Higgins and Others’. The title refers to a court case that took place in late 1850 and the map is a ‘Prosecutor’s Plan’ from the time, showing the part of…
Category: Leeds History
The Best Night Out in History
Here at the Secret Library, we’re celebrating the fact that it’s nearly the weekend by squeezing into our flares and strapping on our platform shoes ready for a big night out! Well… not really, but we did find an old edition of the Yorkshire Evening Post from 1975 and got rather excited by the groovy…
The Majestic remembered
Following the events this week at the Majestic we thought we would share some of our photographs from the early days as a cinema. All photographs are from our Leodis website. The Majestic was built on the site of the former recruiting office used during the First World War. This image from 5th October 1919…
A ‘Little’ Journey
London, Switzerland, Germany… What do all these places have in common? The answer is: you can find them all within the Leeds-Bradford area. Today we thought we’d take a little journey through Europe, Secret Library style. We’ll start in the well-known Leeds suburb of Little London, before calling in on the city’s other Little London,…
Mad about cycling!
As Saturday 5th July 2014 sees the City of Leeds host Le Grand Départ, the start of the world famous Tour de France, we would like to highlight some of our numerous items relating to cycling, some from our special collections and some loanable. ‘Personal best : the autobiography of Beryl Burton’ celebrates a Leeds…
Celebrating 150 Years of Rugby in Leeds, 1864-2014
From 1st April to 20th April 2014 in our newly refurbished Arts Space on the 1st floor we hosted an exhibition celebrating the history of Rugby in Leeds. Panels for each decade displayed information and photographs depicting the sport in Leeds. The 1860s started it off with an advert in the Leeds Mercury for “persons…
Early Theatre in Leeds
We have a lot of fantastic theatres and entertainment on offer in Leeds now but how did it all start? From our playbills collection you can get an idea of some of the earliest theatre entertainment. The first theatre was built in Leeds in 1771 prior to which Leeds had relied on travelling companies of…
Remembering Barnbow during World War 1
This week we saw the return of a special item in our collections which had been out on loan to Lotherton Hall as part of their ‘Duty Calls’ exhibition. ‘Barnbow, No.1 (Leeds) National Filling Factory : a Short History and Record’ was compiled by R.H. Gummer, Chief Engineer in November 1918. The preface of the…
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