KEIGHLEY & DISTRICT LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY
WE PRESERVE AND SHARE
Keighley Local Studies Library is hosting a session on ‘5 Strategies for Researching Yorkshire Family History’, led by respected local and family historian Jude Rhodes, on Wednesday 10th September at 2.15pm. Free to attend. See poster for more details.
The History Society will have stalls at two events coming up over the next couple of weekends.
On Sunday 31st August we will be at the Keighley Bus Museum fundraising event in Keighley College car park. The event runs from 10am to 3pm. See the poster for more details.
On Saturday 6th September we will be at Keighley Show, between 10am and 4pm. See the poster for more details, including the chance to buy cheaper tickets in-advance.
Please come along and say hello, and support these local events.
Great coverage of next week’s History Society meeting in this week’s Keighley News. The meeting focusses on largely-forgotten crime writer Austin Lee, who was born in Cowling and educated at Keighley Boys Grammar School. During the 1950s and 1960s he published various whodunnit novels, many featuring amateur detective Miss Flora Hogg (including ‘Miss Hogg and the Bronte Murders’, with some very evocative descriptions of Haworth in the 1950s).
Speakers will be writer and journalist Sharon Wright, Bronte Parsonage Principal Curator Ann Dinsdale, and History Society committee member Tim Neal, talking about how they became converts to Lee’s cause. There will also be a small display about Austin Lee, courtesy of Keighley Local Studies Library.
The meeting is on Wednesday 13th August 2025, at 7.15pm in the Keighley Civic Centre on North Street. All are welcome to come along. Entry is £3.50 or free to History Society members. History Society members can also join the meeting via Zoom if they prefer. The meeting ends around 8.45pm.
This month’s History Society meeting is on Wednesday 13th August, upstairs in the Civic Centre on North Street at 7.15pm. The subject of the talk is ‘Austin Lee: Man of Mystery’. Austin Lee was born in Cowling and attended Keighley Boys’ Grammar School, and went on to have multiple careers including being an outspoken vicar, a barman, a teacher and the author of a series of cosy-crime novels featuring amateur sleuth Miss Flora Hogg. It’s a bit of team effort this time, with speakers Sharon Wright, Ann Dinsdale and Tim Neal, all of whom are keen to resurrect the profile of this most astonishing Keighley man.
Doors open at 7.15pm at the Civic Centre. All are welcome. Entry is free for History Society members and £3.50 for anyone else. Keighley Local Studies Library have copies of many of Austin’s books if anyone fancies reading them.