This week we welcome back Library and Digital Assistant Joey Talbot for the second part of his illuminating account of American Civil War veterans buried in Leeds… In the previous post, I told of how I was put onto the trail of Leeds veterans of the American Civil War after an email from Andrew Hopkinson…
Category: Leeds History
Cabinet Displays for Armed Forces Day 2024
Visit the Local and Family History department throughout June to see a display curated by our staff exploring two Armed Forces themes, as part of the Armed Forces Day Festival taking place across Leeds this month. One cabinet looks at decompression – the ways soldiers, sailors and air-force personnel relaxed or processed their experiences during…
Leeds Libraries a Century Ago – All Human Life Was There
As a celebration of Volunteers Week 2024, running from next Monday (June 3) to the following Sunday (June 9), we asked freelance writer and one of our longstanding Heritage Volunteers, Tony Harcup, to tell us about about the research he has been doing with old newspaper stories about libraries. When Leeds Libraries appealed for help…
The Places We Live: Redux
This week, for Local and Community History Month, Librarian Antony Ramm offers a brief update to a previous article exploring the histories of communities around the wider Leeds area… Back in May 2022 we published a piece here on the Secret Library Leeds blog that explored the depth and breadth of the local history material…
‘Town Street’: Re-imagining Armley in photographs
This week in Local and Community History Month we hear from Hannah White, who has creatively re-used some images from our Leodis archive to show contrasts and continuities between Town Street in Armley, then and now… You can read much more about Armley in our mini-series of articles, or explore our Armley research guide to…
Thorne’s of Leeds: A Research Jigsaw
This week we’re delighted to publish the first in a series of guest posts for Local and Community History Month. Today, we hear from researcher Andrew Littlewood on his exploration of resources in our Local and Family History department, in his search for information on Henry Thorne & Co. Ltd… You can find out more…
Dancing into History
We hear from Library and Digital Assistant Becky Bavill this week, who brings us a fantastic piece that is combines genealogy with a true crime twist… Arthur Morris, son of Samuel and Harriet was born in 1859. He had 5 siblings. Although the 1881 census had him working alongside his father in the family boot…
Tales from the Horsforth Research Guide
Library and Digital Assistant Jan Pinder has been researching the history of Horsforth in our Central Library collections. This week on the Secret Library we hear some of Jan’s highlights from that work, as well as news of a research guide to aid other researchers into the Horsforth area, part of a series of guides…
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