Author: Admin Tim

Herbert Hugill, a memorial plaque for whom hangs in Keighley Library, was born on 27th July 1872. He served as Secretary of the Keighley War Savings Association during the First World War and as Secretary of the Keighley Literary Society for 10 years.

Stone plaque commemorating Herbert Hugill, on display in the stairwell of Keighley Library, 9th July 2022. The plaque reads “In memory of Herbert Hugill M.B.E. born July 27th 1872, died February 21st 1919. Death opens unknown doors, it is most grand to die.”

Keighley was proud of its money-raising activities during the First World War. According to the Keighley News supplement of 10th September 1932: “Keighley distinguished itself… in money-raising movements for the national need the War Loan campaign of 1917 realised £2,214,089; the submarine appeal in Business Men’s Week, in March 1918, £556,089; Howitzer Week, of July 1918, £259,390; and Thanksgiving Week, of January 1919, £672,878. The Victory Loan effort yielded over £831,000, and War Savings certificates over £811,000, bringing the total for the town to over £6,000,000, or £140 per head of the people.”

Hugill was awarded his Member of the Order of the British Empire (M.B.E.) in the 1918 Birthday Honours given by King George V, for his work with the War Savings cause. The list of honours recipients was published in The London Gazette in early June 1918. He died on 21st February 1919.

Ian Dewhirst, ‘A History of Keighley’ (Keighley Corporation, 1974): “Two months later the (post-Great War influenza) epidemic recurred for the third and last time and claimed, among others, the Secretary of the Keighley and Craven Building Society, Herbert Hugill M.B.E., who had pushed the local War Savings movement: he died on the day he should have been guest of honour at a dinner celebrating the Borough’s raising of £5,000,000 in war loans.”

Following his death, a trust fund was established in January 1920 to provide an annual prize (The Herbert Hugill Prize) for the Best Student of Mathematics at Keighley Boys’ Grammar School.

The photograph of the memorial plaque, which hangs at the top of the stairs to the Local Studies Library, was taken by Tim Neal in July 2022. The postcard is postmarked 1918 and shows the Town Hall Square before the War Memorial was erected in 1924. The Library is on the far left, with the Temperance Hall alongside. The Mechanics’ Institute with its clocktower, which was also home to Keighley Boys’ Grammar School, dominates the picture.

Over fifty programmes and promotional leaflets from the 1950s have been added to the History Society’s album of Hippodrome Theatre Programmes this weekend. Click below to see the full selection.

These photographs of The Vine Tavern, Hope Place, Greengate Road, were taken by Andy Wade on the 24th July 2012, shortly before the pub closed for good.

Keighley historian Eddie Kelly: “The Vine was purpose built as a beer house by a Holmes Emmott and opened upon completion during late 1863 or early 1864. Taylors Brewery who had probably supplied the beer prior to their ownership subsequently purchased the beer house from Holmes Emmott, conveyed during January 1873. A Full License was granted to the beer house 7th November 1961 following two previous refusals. I have 30th August 2012 as the final day of trading.”

The pub had been acquired by the Timothy Taylor brewery in January 1873 and was closed by the brewers in 2012. The property remained vacant until it was sold by Hayfield Robinson Property Consultants in 2020 for residential or commercial use.

The newly-built branch of the Yorkshire Bank officially opened at 73 North Street on Monday 22nd July 1968. It was built on the site previously occupied by the Vickers Store, opposite the original branch on the corner of Bow Street. Vickers was demolished in 1967 and it took around a year for the new building to take shape.

It remained as the town’s Yorkshire Bank branch until the bank was taken over and the building was rebranded as Virgin Media in 2021. The branch was closed down in January 2022 and remains vacant at the moment.

Images left to right: The new building photographed in July 1968, with the original branch in the foreground; Yorkshire Bank at night, photographed by Roy Willoughby circa 1987; (inset) Photographed by Christopher M. Kelly circa 2000; Virgin Money branch in April 2021, photographed by Tim Neal; Vacant offices in July 2022, photographed by Tim Neal.

Sutton Park in Sutton-in-Craven was officially opened on Saturday 20th July 1912. Much of the land for the park was a bequest in the will of John William Hartley, owner of Sutton Hall, who died in 1909, with some additional land granted by the Chairman of the Parish Council, James Bairstow, in 1911. It was his wife who performed the opening ceremony.

The war memorial cross in the park was officially unveiled on 19th March 1921. Initially it commemorated local soldiers who fought in the Great War. The names of soldiers from the Second World War were added in 1950.

The colour photographs of the park were taken by Laurence Brocklesby in August 2005 and the Lilywhite Ltd. postcards were donated by Laurence.

This cutting is from The Commercial Motor paper dated 18th July 1922. According to the caption, the photograph shows “A Leyland double-deck petrol bus, with driver over the engine, running in competition with a trolley-bus on the Utley to Eastburn route of the Keighley Corporation, where an experimental service of petrol vehicles is being tried.”

This decade was a transition period for public transport in the town. The electric powered tram service had been in operation since 1904, running between Utley, Stockbridge and Ingrow. But services beyond these terminals required either trolleybuses (powered still by overhead cables but running on tyres rather than tracks) or the experimental (and somewhat unreliable) petrol-driven buses that were introduced in the 1920s.

In 1924 (two years after this photograph was taken), the tracks were taken up for the trams, but trolleybuses continued to run until 1932.

The cutting is from a scrapbook of clippings kept by George Crowther of photographs he took and articles he wrote for various publications. Crowther (d: 1960) spent 50 years with the Bradford and District Newspaper Company until his retirement in 1956. He started out as a press photographer in the 1920s and ended with six years as editor of the Keighley News (1950-1956). He was active in the St. John Ambulance Brigade and served on the Council of the Bronte Society. Scrapbook donor to be identified.

The background image is from a 1905 Valentine and Sons postcard showing the tram service terminus at Utley. Utley Congregational Church is on the left. The last service at the Church was held in November 1964 and the church was subsequently demolished.

Longlands Hall was put up for sale by Mary Merrall on 16th July 1919. It was the former home of industrialist Edwin Robinson Merrall whose family owned Lees Mill and Ebor Mills in the Worth Valley which the house overlooked. Edwin was the second son of Michael Merrall. It was the last of four houses owned by the Merrall family. The house was designed by Keighley architect J. B. Bailey and was built between 1882 and 1884. The architectural style is Northern Manor House, a mixture of classical and exaggerated Jacobean styles.

It was occupied by the Merralls with their seven children up until the start of the First World War. Following the death of Edwin and his son Philip, it was sold by Mary Merrall in 1919. The sale included 25 acres of grounds, a lodge, and a yard well away from the house with washing shed, carriage shed, coach house, harness room, a Dutch barn, the groom’s cottage and a petrol store.

The property was bought by a Mr Inglis for personal use in the early 1920s, and then sold to a Mr Paley in 1939, who had plans to turn the house into a hotel. After the war it was sold to textile producers the Heald Brothers for use as a hostel for Italian immigrant mill girls. In the 1960s, housing was built on the surrounding land and the house fell into disrepair. It was sold as a retirement home around this period before the Youth Hostel Association purchased the hall for £23,500 in 1974.

The house had been brought to the attention of the YHA by local policeman Jens Hislop and the house was vested in the YHA on the 18th October 1974. It was bought and developed through a combination of grants from The Countryside Commission, West Yorkshire County Council, and the Department of Education and Science.

The Youth Hostel was officially opened on the 8th May 1976 by Councillor J. S. Bell, Chairman of West Yorkshire County Council. It is located on Longlands Drive, off Lees Lane in Cross Roads with Lees, just outside Haworth.

Although it officially opened in May 1976, the hostel was active from earlier, possibly even late 1975. The first wardens were John and Sue Page and there were 90 beds. Many of the ground floor rooms, including the ballroom and lounge, were converted to staff quarters. Extensive modernisation began in 1994, including adapting some of the ground floor staff rooms into dormitory and guest rooms, and sub-dividing some of the large upstairs dormitories into smaller dormitories. Further redevelopments and improvements followed in 2009 and 2012. In 2020 the hostel boasts 89 beds across two single rooms, two double rooms, one three bedded room, three four bedded rooms, six six bedded rooms, one seven bedded room and three eight bedded rooms.

The main image shows Central Park in Haworth with Longlands Hall on the hill in the distance, and is from a Lilywhite postcard. The inset image is a John Arthur Dixon postcard for the YHA from around 1980.

Acclaimed Keighley-born violinist John Tiplady Carrodus died on 13th July 1895. He was born in Braithwaite on 20th January 1836. He was initially taught the violin by his father and in January 1845 made his first public appearance at Keighley Mechanics’ Institute. He was then tutored by German violinist and composer Bernhard Molique who Carrodus followed to Germany.

According to the Keighley News of 10th September 1932: “In 1853 he was engaged in the orchestra of the Royal Italian Opera at Covent Garden, and was subsequently leading violinist at His Majesty’s Theatre. The introducer of the public violin recital, Mr Carrodus was heard at many of the leading concerts, and for some years he was the principal professor of the violin at Trinity College, London, and president of the College of Violinists. He had often obeyed Royal commands to perform.”

According to biographer Nicholas Sackman: “Throughout his professional life Carrodus suffered acutely from a highly-strung nervous temperament, and his ever-increasing responsibilities for teaching and performing created great anxiety, deep depression, and a level of insomnia which meant that, on occasions, he did not sleep for a week at a time.”

He was made the first Freeman of the Borough of Keighley on 28th December 1894 and the actual presentation was made on 5th February 1895 when he revisited the town. Just a few months later he died in London and is buried in Highgate Cemetery. A memorial plaque is hung at the top of the stairs in Keighley Library.

A new season of plays was launched at the Hippodrome Theatre on Monday 11th July 1949. The plays were performed by the Lawrence-Williamson Company, taking over from a run of plays by the Winwood Players.

The first production was ‘The Last of Mrs Cheyney’ by Frederick Lonsdale (1881-1954), chosen for its wide appeal following its recent London revival: “Mrs Cheyney was once a shop girl. She yearned for luxury and beauty and so persuaded an accomplice to teach her how to get it. She takes up Robbery as a profession and thereby a means to reach the Set and good things of life which money secures – but Nemesis awaits the charming crook. A grand play written in the best Lonsdale manner and which should ensure crowded houses.”

The following plays were ‘The Patsy’, ‘Baby Mine’, ‘Miranda’, ‘The Poltergeist’, ‘Michael and Mary’, ‘Dangerous Corner’ and ‘Jane Steps Out’. Players included Miriam Raymond, Frank Pemberton, Mary Quinn, Leigh Knight, Doris Richmond, Robert Hollyman, Joan Harding, Donald McClay and Donald Nithsdale.

The Queen’s Theatre became the Hippodrome in 1909, although both names remained on the front of the building, and many programmes and adverts continued to refer to the ‘Hippodrome and Queen’s Theatre’. Impresario Francis Laidler (1867-1955) took over the theatre in 1913 – he also ran the Prince’s Theatre and Alhambra Theatre in Bradford, and the Theatre Royal in Leeds. He was managing director up until his death when his widow, Gwladys, took over until the theatre closed in October 1956.

The theatre was demolished in 1961 and in its place now stands the Airedale Shopping Centre multi-storey car park. Keighley Local Studies Library holds various records relating to the theatre including a scrapbook belonging to founder Abraham Kershaw, a box office notebook, a theatrical postcard album covering 1906 to 1929, autograph books and various photographs, programmes, and posters.

The original programme was donated to Keighley and District Local History Society by Tim Neal in August 2020. It is held in the History Society’s physical archive.

It’s been a number of years since the History Society has had a talk on the Bronte family – so we’re making up for that on WEDNESDAY 13th JULY 2022 by having Nick Holland talk about ‘Anne Bronte and her siblings’. Nick is the author of ‘In Search of Anne Bronte’, ‘Emily Brontë – A Life In 20 Poems’ and ‘Aunt Branwell and the Brontë Legacy’.

This talk will take place upstairs at the Library. Doors open at 7pm for a 7.30pm start. Anyone is welcome to attend. There will be a charge of £3 on the door for non-members.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to Covid affecting two of our committee members, we will not be able to run this meeting on Zoom.