This week on the blog we hear from guest author Struan Yallup, who brings us the tale of how a tragic accident shines a light on remarriage in Victorian Leeds – and on why you were born. This story isn’t actually about a cat. The story only happened because of a cat. This story is…
Category: Social History
Upstairs and Downstairs
This week we hear from guest writer, Jacqui Taylor, who has been researching Harewood House. Harewood House is an 18th century Georgian country house well known for its Chippendale furniture, extensive art collection, and beautiful landscaped gardens. It is located seven miles north of Leeds city centre, adjacent to the village of Harewood. While compiling…
Educating the City: Leeds City Council Papers
Welcome back to Heritage Volunteer Andy Armstrong this week on the Secret Library Leeds blog. This is part seven of Andy’s curation of the Leeds City Council papers held in our Local and Family History department; this time, Andy has been looking at education in Leeds. As always, Andy’s research is accompanied by a research guide……
Family History Fact Checking – Part 4
This week’s article is the final part of Becky’s quest to discover the facts about Peaches Cottage in Middleton. Read parts one, two and three before starting this article. Welcome back to the last part in our series of articles about family history fact checking, using Peaches Cottage Middleton as a starting point. Previously I have been…
The Making of the Yorkshire Almanac 2026, Sheep Flavour
This week on the Secret Library Leeds, Leeds’s Singing Organ-Grinder tells how moving to Yorkshire five years ago inspired him to compile a day-by-day historical anthology. One sunny day in spring 2021, we chugged cheerfully east along the M62 in a removal van on a roundabout route from Hackney to Headingley. The third lockdown was…
Family History Fact Checking – Part 2
This is the second part of a four part series. Read part one here. The purpose of this series of articles is to demonstrate how you can use the resources of the Local and Family History department to conduct a fact checking exercise. Family historians will frequently encounter assertions, facts and descriptions that seem completely…
Family History Fact Checking – Part 1
This week we welcome back Becky from the Local and Family History Library who tells us about a recent enquiry and how she went about solving it. The enquiry came from a customer keen to track down a photo of a home that their family used to inhabit: I am trying to find a photograph…
The King of the Pantomime Writers: R. C. Oldham (1873-1933)
This week on the Secret Library Leeds, librarian Antony Ramm brings you some festive joy with a sequel to an article originally published in 2017… We sometimes like to say that one of the values of the Secret Library Leeds website is that the articles and the content remain permanently out there on the information…
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