Month: May 2022

This is a terrific piece of 1950s advertising that has just been uploaded to the History Society’s Flickr site. Sadly the Hippodrome closed within a matter of months after this show.

The History Society’s guest speaker this month is Kathryn Hughes giving her talk ‘Mr Pybus and Bradford’s Munition Factories – How Bradford took the lead in engaging female munitions workers’. The talk is on Wednesday 11th May.

This talk is happening upstairs at Keighley Library and is open to both members and non-members. The charge for non-members is £3, payable on the door. To reserve a place, please email klyhistory@yahoo.com

If members wish they can join in by Zoom instead (this option is only available to paid-up History Society members). Members will receive their Zoom invites by email from Anne-Marie a few days in advance.

Doors open at 7pm for a 7.30pm start. Please check social media or our website nearer the time for any updates.

Saturday 3rd May 1952 was closing night of Keighley Little Theatre’s production of ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ by Oscar Wilde. It starred Eric B. Broster, Ken Everett, David Brown, Morag C. Moorhouse, Norma Feather, Joyce Reeder, Ray Dewsnap, George Scull and John Harker, and was produced by Eric B. Broster. At this point the President of the Theatre Group was Keighley Mayor, Councillor David C. Hudson.

Keighley Little Theatre was formed in June 1947 when Frederic W. Pye got together with seven like-minded people in a house in Oakworth and discussed the viability of forming a small amateur company to stage plays. The Theatre Group included Doreen Mary Hillary (known as Mary) who acted and was involved in productions for over three decades, and Eric B. Broster, who went on to direct many of their plays.

In the early months of 1949, the Theatre Group was offered the lease on the premises in Devonshire Street that became home to the amateur theatre company. Those premises were Devonshire Hall, originally part of the Liberal Club on Scott Street, which had been erected at the very end of the nineteenth century. Devonshire Hall had been used for lectures, functions, dances and so on (and continued to be for hire through Keighley Little Theatre). Having been looking for a permanent home, the lease was taken up. A stage and proscenium had to be built with an appropriate new lighting rig. The theatre remains the home of the Theatre Group to this day. In 1969, Keighley Little Theatre re-branded as Keighley Playhouse.

The original Bronte Society Museum opened on the first floor of the Yorkshire Penny Bank building at the top of Main Street in Haworth on 1st May 1895. It remained the venue for the museum until the Society took over the parsonage in 1928.

The building housed the village’s Mechanics Institute from 1877 before it was bought by the Yorkshire Penny Bank in 1894. They altered the entrance and first floor, and extended the building upwards with the addition of the turret. The framed rectangular space above the first floor window used to hold a stone engraved ‘Yorkshire Penny bank’. It was an antique shop in the 1960s and for many years, up until January 2019, it housed the Haworth Tourist Information Centre. It is now occupied by the Pretty Penny gift shop.