This week on the Secret Library, Librarian Louise Birch introduces an exciting new collection for the Local and Family History library. This collection is launching as part of Local and Community History Month. It’s hard to imagine a time when we won’t remember what it felt like to live through Covid 19 and the impact…
Category: Social History
New Armley Research Guide
This week Josh Flint will discuss the new Local and Family History Research Guide on Armley. This Research Guide will be of great use to anyone with an interest in the history of Armley and how that history is represented in the Leeds Central Library Collection. This article will examine interesting images highlighted in this…
Your Family History #1: Throstle Nest, Wortley
This week on the Secret Library we welcome guest author Tony Stead, whose personal research into his family tree and their connections to the Throstle Nest House of Wortley is reproduced below. This is the first in a projected new series, in which family historians will present the fruits of their labour. The Stead family…
The Leeds Folk Festival
This week on the Secret Library we hear from Karen Downham, Library Officer at the Central Library. Although most music events are cancelled at the moment, Karen gives us a fascinating look back to an event that took place in the 1980s – explaining, along the way, how The Rolling Stones’ 1982 European Tour caused…
Visitations and Pedigrees
As part of a series examining family history resources for beginners, librarian Antony Ramm explores Visitation records – a largely neglected but extremely worthwhile set of genealogy records from the 16th and 17th-centuries… Family historians will be familiar with the difficulty of tracing ancestries prior to the almost-simultaneous start of Civil Registration and Census records in the…
Keep on Keeping On: Running a Library Department in a Crisis
This week, Antony Ramm, Librarian-Manager for the Local and Family History (LFH) department at Leeds Central Library, explains the steps staff have taken to continue operating a specialist public library department in these unprecedented times… As previously announced on the Secret Library, the Central Library in Leeds shut its doors to staff and the public…
The Story of Hey’s Brewery Women’s Football Team in 1921
This week on the Secret Library we hear from Josh Flint on the tumultuous year that Hey’s Brewery Women’s Football team had in 1921. 1921 was a fascinating year for Women’s Football and Hey’s Brewery Women’s Football team encapsulated this, as they spent most of the year playing in front of enormous crowds and ended…
The West Riding Radical Press and Leeds Other Paper
This week on the Secret Library we hear from John Boocock on the history of radical publishing in Leeds and the West Riding, from the 19th-century to the Leeds Other Paper in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. This will be the subject of John’s upcoming talk at the Central Library (February 19) – further details…
