WE PRESERVE AND SHARE
This album has just ‘gone live’ on our Flickr site. It’s a 92-page handbook for a 1923 Grand Bazaar held in aid of Victoria Hospital (which at that time ran on voluntary funding). It features a history and photographs of the hospital, details of the stalls and entertainments that made up the five-day bazaar, and adverts for dozens of local businesses. It forms a fantastic window into life in Keighley over 100 years ago.
Keighley Local Studies Library have been in touch with a date for your diaries for the end of January…
“We have an event on Saturday, 25th January that I am sure some of your members would be very interested in. The morning is a one place study of the Mechanics’ Institute with Jude Rhodes, we shall be getting out plans, photographs and other archives out for this in the morning. In the afternoon we have the book launch of Colin Neville’s Keighley School of Art and a talk by him about the Mechanics’ Institute, the art school and its artists.”
Please contact the team in the Local Studies Library if you want any further details.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Our first History Society meeting of 2025 will be family and local historian Jude Rhodes looking at back-to-back housing as a solution to the rapid population growth during the Industrial Revolution which led to disease in poor social classes, but were all back-to-back housing areas of slums?
This is a HISTORY SOCIETY MEMBERS ONLY meeting, which will be held on Zoom (not in the Library). Details on how to join in on Zoom will be sent out via email a few days in advance of the meeting.
Terrific spread in the Keighley News for our upcoming Christmas meeting, upstairs in the Library on Wednesday 11th December 2024. This year we are not just marking the festive season but we will also be celebrating our 20th birthday.
There is the chance to look through some of the donations made throughout the year, a look back at Christmas in Keighley in 1964, a quiz, and of course cake and tea and coffee. There is also the chance to take out society membership for 2025.
The meeting is open to all. We meet upstairs in the Local Studies Library from 7.15pm (please use the Albert Street entrance if arriving after 7pm). Entry is free to History Society members or £3.50 for anyone else. The meeting finishes around 8.45pm.
Cliffe Castle Support Group are holding a free talk on ‘The Stained Glass of Cliffe Castle’, to be given by curator Heather Millard. It’s this Saturday (2nd November 2024) at 2pm at Cliffe Castle. Booking essential: telephone 01535 618231 or email cliffe.castle@bradford.gov.uk
One of the great stories that relate to the Hippodrome Theatre in Keighley is that of ‘Syncopating Sandy’. Many people will have heard the tale of how Sandy played piano on the stage of the theatre, non-stop, for 133 hours back in 1956 – some people reading this might even have witnessed the feat! Thousands of people bought tickets to see stages of his performance, and some simply gathered outside the theatre in order to be part of the event.
We were delighted, therefore, that in the latest batch of photographs by John Tobin that we have processed, there were half-a-dozen that captured the last moments of the performance and captured Sandy pretty much exhausted after his ordeal. We will be writing up more about Sandy in a future newsletter, but for now we are very excited to share some of the pictures with you. Our continued thanks to Kathleen Procter who donated the negatives and to Billy Stride for scanning and processing them.
Keighley Local Studies Library has asked us to let people know that they are starting a series of free Family History based sessions in the library. They will be led by genealogist and historian Jude Rhodes, and, if popular, will happen every month.
The first session is on Wednesday 23rd October, from 2.15pm to 4.15pm, and is entitled ‘The Asylum’. Jude Rhodes will take people through the background to the care of the mentally unwell before the building of County Asylums. Discussing the categories for mental illness using admission registers and census returns (please be aware that the terminology used in the past can appear to be offensive today). Using one of her ancestors, as an example, she will give an insight to life in an asylum in the 1900s and how to access records within the 100 year rule.
Please contact the Library for further details.
These beautifully atmospheric photographs of an autumn day in the park of Cliffe Castle were taken by Keighley-based photographer John Tobin in the late 1950s.
We have been given 100s of negatives for photographs taken by John and are gradually scanning them and adding them to our Flickr site. We also want to find out more about the pictures and about John himself, so if anyone can help please get in touch.
Our thanks to Kathleen Procter who donated the negatives and to Billy Stride for scanning the negatives and producing the wonderful images.