We were delighted to welcome University of Leeds student, Jessica Heath, to the Central Library in March of this year. Jessica led a workshop exploring the causes and effects of the 1970 Clothing Strike across Leeds, which was largely led by women workers. The legacy of that workshop, as Librarian Antony Ramm explains, was the…
Category: Social History
William Boyne and the Voices of History
Librarian Antony Ramm takes a look at the deep history behind the creation of a celebrated Leeds antiquarian “masterpiece”. This article has been written to accompany the publication of a new Research Guide at the Central Library, exploring our Leeds Antiquarian Collection… William Boyne was born in Leeds around 1814, to Thomas Boyne, a successful local…
The Vote Before the Vote
This week, local author Chris Nickson and curator of 2018 exhibition The Vote Before the Vote, tells us more about some important, but relatively unknown women of Leeds. Right at the start of the era, in 1832, Mary Smith of Stanmore, Yorkshire, which is believed to be a property very close to today’s Cottage Road…
Booze n’ Footy: On Northern Identity and Masculinity
On Tuesday evening the Central Library welcomed a small panel of experts for an hour-long discussion. @grimupnorth2017’s @123McTom and @mjohnreeve discussing how history can inform identity at the #TheseNorthernTypes roundtable event. pic.twitter.com/Amc2ZPMvRc — Dr Rhiannon Pickin (@RhiannonPickin) April 17, 2018 Designed to spark thinking and discussion around the theme of ‘Northern identity,’ coinciding with a…
The Luddites of Liversedge
This week we hear from guest author Mike Harwood, who tells the fascinating story of Luddite activities in Liversedge, part-way between Leeds and Huddersfield – a story that “should be of interest to anyone interested in West Yorkshire – especially its industrial history”… ‘”You’re a Luddite, Mr Brook,” said the headmaster.’[1] And The Chambers Dictionary[2] has…
Do You Remember Hunslet Grange Housing Estate?
This week we hear from Louise Dwyer and Gill Crawshaw, MA students at the Leeds Arts University. Louise and Gill wo researched the history and legacy of the Hunslet Grange estate (aka Leek Street flats). Read on to find out more about their research and how they used Leeds Libraries resources. Our current research focuses…
Xin Nian Kuai Le!
As we welcome in the Year of the Dog, librarian Ross Horsley looks back over some of the ways Leeds Libraries has worked with the city’s Chinese community over the past twelve months, exploring local history in what was the Year of the Rooster. The Leeds Is My Home project is a collaboration between Leeds…
Voices from the Past, Part II: 19th-century Working-class Autobiographies
Librarian Antony Ramm searches for the authentic voice of the Leeds people in the 19th-century. Many of these Voices from the Past are from workers in the textile mills of Leeds and West Yorkshire: see a recent blog by Emily Owen to read how 20th-century textile workers can contribute their memories to contemporary research. A…
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