The fifth in a newly-regular series exploring books and other items selected from our vast collections. In this entry Librarian Antony Ramm showcases a wonderful collection of photographs showing Unitarian Churches across Yorkshire in the late 19th-century… This is a really nice volume, a collection of images and historical notes about Unitarian Chapels across Yorkshire….
Category: Yorkshire History
I Was Here: Diversity in Georgian Yorkshire
This week we hear from independent researcher Danny Friar, who offers a brilliant and sensitively-researched excavation of the Georgian era, revealing fragments of a hidden, but universal, history… Ten years ago a discussion of the Georgian period may have brought up names such as Lord Horatio Nelson, Captain James Cook, William Wilberforce and Jane Austen….
The Chimney Corner: Secret Books from the Secret Library #4
The fourth in a newly-regular series exploring books and other items selected from our vast collections. In this entry Librarian Antony Ramm is looking at the rather odd requirements of an 18th-century Lord Mayor in Yorkshire… Before discussing the book in question this week, it’s probably worth saying a little bit about how we’re choosing…
The Chimney Corner: Secret Books from the Secret Library #3
The third in a newly-regular series looking at books and other items randomly selected from our vast collections. In this entry Librarian Antony Ramm takes a look at an obscure (to us) religious manuscript… The first thing to say about today’s entry – the enigmatically-titled Manuscript – is the sheer solidity of its binding. And…
Slavery in Yorkshire
This week on the blog we hear from Library Officer Ruairí Lewis about a heated debate between two leading local men in the early 19th-century… In 1830, the ‘Tory Radical’ Richard Oastler sent an open letter to the Leeds Mercury, owned and edited by prominent Leeds liberal Edward Baines (1774-1848), entitled ‘Slavery in Yorkshire’. Oastler…
The Public Benefit Boot Company
This week we welcome guest blogger Dave Bean, who has spent years researching and writing about the Public Benefit Boot Company, which had Northern and Southern divisions. He has recently donated his collection to Leeds Central Library and it can be found in the Local and Family History Library. Here he tells us about the…
The amazing career of aviation correspondent, author and journalist Allen Rowley
This week’s post is written by Geoff Carter. Geoff has also kindly loaned items belonging to Allen Rowley to our 2022 Breaking the News exhibition and donated some incredible 18th century newspapers to our permanent collection. Allen Rowley was born at Thornhill, Dewsbury, and as a nephew of the village newsagent, started delivering the Yorkshire…
Before Windrush: Black People in Leeds and Bradford, 1708 – 1948, Part IV
This week on the Secret Library we hear from researcher Danny Friar, who explores the rich history of people of African heritage making Leeds and Bradford their home over a 300 year period. This is Part IV of a four part series during Black History Month: the result of new research, these articles will shed…
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