This week we take an in-depth look at events at Leeds Central Library during the Heritage Open Days Festival 2025. Local History Open Day Running on Saturday 13 September, 11.00am – 2.00pm in the Local and Family History Library, the Open Day is a chance for librarians to exhibit some of our most cherished and…
Category: Treasures & Discoveries
Unearthed: The Power of Gardening
Unearthed: The Power of Gardening is a new, free exhibition at Leeds Central Library running from 10 September – 29 October 2025, exploring the transformative, enriching and sometimes radical power of gardening. Inspired by the British Library’s major exhibition and following successful visits to Armley, Rothwell and Compton Road Community Hubs and Libraries, Unearthed celebrates…
A Dream of Leeds (Part 2)
Becky Bavill brings us the second part of this fascinating story of a musical life in Leeds… In the first part of this article, I had identified the author of the music and her family. What I was interested in now were the two people Amelia’s father felt were important enough to him or his…
A Dream of Leeds (Part I)
This week on the Secret Library Leeds we welcome Library and Digital Assistant Becky Bavill for a deep-dive into the family history archives, all sparked by some cross-departmental collaboration with our colleagues in the Music Library… In a box in the music department is a printed pianoforte piece. It’s called ‘The Dream’ by the late…
Ghost Stories and Weird Experiences (Part 2)
Halloween is officially here so today we continue with some more gruesome tales from the spooky scrapbook compiled by Edwin Hick. As mentioned in Part 1, this scrapbook is officially called ‘Ghost Stories and Weird Experiences, Life after Death etc.’ and is full of newspaper cuttings from the local newspapers detailing weird and wonderful stories…
Ghost Stories and Weird Experiences (Part 1)
As we creep ever nearer to Halloween we thought it only right to regale you with a few spooky tales from a certain scrapbook in our collections. Known colloquially by staff as the ‘ghost scrapbook’ and more officially as ‘Ghost Stories and Weird Experiences, Life after Death etc.’, it forms Volume 37 of the Edwin…
A Voyage of Discovery
To conclude this year’s ‘Routes – Networks – Connections’ themed Heritage Open Days, Senior Librarian for Special Collections and Heritage, Rhian Isaac, shares her journey into researching a special collection of photographs. As lockdowns began to ease during the Covid pandemic, I was finally able to return to the Central Library to check on…
A Book to Dye For
In this blog post Rhian Isaac, Senior Librarian for Special Collections and Heritage, shares a deadly discovery. One weekend I stumbled upon an intriguing article in National Geographic that highlighted the Winterthur Museum’s Poison Book Project, and it instantly caught my attention. I was captivated with the idea of poisonous books lying undetected in library collections,…
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