What's happening in Beeston, Belle Isle, Cottingley, Holbeck, Hunslet, Middleton and Stourton
We all commemorated both VE Day and VJ day. Older family members told me that for them the most significant was VE as they could go about their daily lives without the fear of being killed by enemy bombing. Black-out curtains came down and streetlights came on. Trams and buses
Hunslet Mills are of considerable architectural and landscape value, the seven-storey twenty-five bay mill building which dominates the skyline of South Leeds and forms the major block of an eight acre flax spinning mill. It is a structure that is very important not only in landscape terms, but also for
A fascinating archive of historic treasures charting centuries of the city’s industrial heritage has been revealed during a painstaking cataloguing project at a Leeds museum. Kittens driving cranes, beautiful vintage Christmas cards and an image of a Leeds branch of the Home Guard are among the remarkable array of objects
Edmund James Arnold was born in Sherborne, Dorset, on 28 May 1840 his father was James Arnold, a tailor and woollen draper and his wife was called Ann. Edmund went on to serve an apprenticeship with a London printer. He must have been an ambitious lad because in 1863 he
Robert Barr was born on the 12th December 1889 on a farmstead near Edinburgh, Scotland, and while he was still young his parents moved to Woolley Moor Farm located between Wakefield and Barnsley and his education was carried out at Woolley School. When he was aged 14 he persuaded his
In the late 1800s a man called John Waddington had just completed his apprenticeship as a printer and was full of aspirations and he decided that he would like to start his own business. John had a friend called Wilson Barrett who was an actor/manager at the Grand Theatre in
John Cooke was a local printer in Meadow Lane, Leeds, and he had a son born on 4 July 1842 who was named Alfred Battye Cooke who throughout his life would only be known as Alf. Alf’s early years were spent as a newsboy and then working in the family printing
The Friends of Middleton Park are hosting a free guided historical coal mining walk in Middleton Park on Sunday (16 March 2025). Middleton colliery has been in operation, for certain from the early 1600s, and probably back to medieval times. The walk will take in some of the areas mined
Two young men who were employed in the Engineering Labourites at the Yorkshire College visited a soap works in 1897 where they saw a number of girls wrapping the bars of soap by hand. Andrew Forbes and Frederick Grover thought that a mechanical device could be provided to carry out
The year is 1844 and on the evening of 9 and 10 June there was great excitement on the streets of Leeds where there was a clash between the Borough Police and the Privates of the 70th Regiment of Foot who at this time were stationed in the town. It