Heritage Open Days 2025

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…

Heritage Open Day 2024: What’s in a Name?

To mark the upcoming Heritage Open Day Week (6-15 September 2024), Library and Digital Assistant Becky Bavill brings us some fantastic detective work in our Central Library archives to (re)discover the site of a long-forgotten mansion in the centre of Leeds… Join us on Saturday September 7 in the Central Library’s Local and Family History…

Heritage Open Day 2023 Round-Up

This week on the Secret Library we round-up all the amazing events Leeds Libraries offered during Heritage Open Day Week! All images are (c) Leeds Libraries unless stated otherwise Local History Open DayWe kicked things off on Saturday September 9 with the second in our Local History Open Days – a chance for us to…

Opening the textile heritage of Leeds

We’re still recovering from our amazing but very-busy Open Day last Saturday, part of our Heritage Open Day (HOD) Week offer. We’ll be bringing you a full round-up of that day, and all our other wonderful HOD events in a few weeks – but today we can share a small snapshot of what we’ve been…

Heritage Open Days 2023

Every September we get very excited about the Heritage Open Days festival, which this year runs from 8th – 17th September. This sees thousands of staff and volunteers across England organise events to celebrate our fantastic history and culture. It’s your chance to see hidden places and try out new experiences – all of which are FREE…

Youngmans Restaurant

Youngmans Restaurant features as stop five in the Edible Leeds trail. Librarian Helen Skilbeck takes a closer look at the history of the restaurant and the family behind the name. Gerald Priestland famously called Leeds “the intellectual capital of fish and chips” – and he had a point, with the town’s love of the dish…

Leeds & the Craft Beer Revolution

As part of our ongoing series of longer articles exploring stops on our Edible Leeds heritage Trail, Librarian Antony Ramm takes a look this week at the 20-year history of craft beer in Leeds… Leeds, of course, has a long and venerable history when it comes to brewing, stretching back to at least the brewery…

Two Extraordinary Banquets

This week on the Secret Library, Librarian Antony Ramm briefly explores the stories behind two quite amazing political banquets in 19th-century Leeds. These both form entries on our Edible Leeds heritage trail, designed for Heritage Open Day Week 2021. In this short tale of two extraordinary political banquets, we start with the most well-known: the…