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…
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…
Thomas Gent’s 1733 Wood Engraving of Leeds
Librarian Antony Ramm takes a brief look at a lesser-known view of Leeds in the 18th-century… Eighteenth-century Leeds suffers slightly, perhaps, in the popular mind-set, sandwiched between a 19th-century more obviously traceable in its effects on the built environment of the city, and a seventeenth-century with more viscerally thrilling episodes and dominant personalities. While much good…
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…
Leeds International Exhibition, 1890
Librarian Antony Ramm takes a brief look at the Leeds International Exhibition of 1890, a spectacular showcase with a sad ending… International exhibitions made a frequent appearance in Europe and the United States during the second half of the 19th-century, providing “nations with opportunities to demonstrate their artistic, technical and scientific ingenuity.” Among the most…
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…
Can You Help? On the Trail of a WWII Soldier from Leeds
This week we hear from Dirk Paagman, who is searching for a photograph and further details about William George McClelland, a Leeds soldier who died during World War II. Dirk got in touch with us at the Local and Family History department to see if we could find anything in the local newspapers of the…
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