KEIGHLEY & DISTRICT LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY
WE PRESERVE AND SHARE
Remember the Airedale Shopping Centre in Keighley before it had a roof? These photographs from the History Society’s archive show the shopping centre in the second half of the 1980s – before roof, during roof construction and all shiny and new!
We now have over 10,000 images available to view on our Flickr website. This album is the most recent addition, featuring adverts from a 1915 edition of the Wool Year Book. The book belonged to Willie Pickles of Malsis Road who used to work at Robert Clough’s. It was donated to the History Society by his daughter Janet Bastow in January this year.
A short silent video that flicks through the pages of a Keighley Corporation handbook from 1966.
Our first History Society meeting of 2020 is this Wednesday (8th January). Retired university lecturer and curator of the website NotJustHockney.info, Colin Neville will present his talk on seven locally-based but nationally-acclaimed artists. He will also be selling copies of his tie-in book (£5 each, all proceeds to the upkeep of Silsden Town Hall).
History Society guest speaker talks take place upstairs at Keighley Library. Doors open at 7pm and the meetings start at 7.30pm. There is a lift available for those who need it. Tea and coffee is served. Admission is open to all and it costs £3 (£1 for History Society members).
You can support the work done by the History Society by becoming a member at one of our meetings. Membership costs £10 (£15 for a couple) and goes to supporting the work that we do plus gives reduced admission to our meetings and the opportunity to take part in members-only activities.
The latest History Society newsletter is now available. It covers the monthly meetings for January to March and reveals some of the plans for the History Society in the year ahead. If anyone wants to join the History Society and support what we do plus have access to members-only events please come along to any monthly meeting or see the support-us section of this website.
An audio-only recording of a Christmas talk given by the late Ian Dewhirst in 2005 is now available to listen to on our Facebook page. Click below to hear the talk, accompanied by images from the History Society digital archive.
The History Society would like to offer an apology for the sound difficulties in tonight’s talk (Ian Dewhirst: Keighley Christmases in the Past). It didn’t do Ian justice (although, as someone pointed out, he didn’t have a very high opinion of IT himself so would possibly have been amused by the shenanigans). Anyone who attended the talk is welcome to attend any one of 2020’s talks free of charge. Just let Sarah on the desk know on the evening. We hope those who stayed and huddled around the projector finally got to enjoy the talk. We will post the talk on our Flickr page this weekend for those who could not stay. Our apologies again, and we hope you have an enjoyable time over the Christmas period.
A nice little curio – an advert for Nugget boot polish featuring East Riddlesden Hall. The newspaper is unknown but the advert appears to be from around the 1940s.
It’s the last History Society meeting of the year next Wednesday (11th December) and we are marking Christmas with something special. Firstly there will be (quite literally) a pub quiz – identifying pubs past and present from the area. Then we have a recording of the late Ian Dewhirst talking about Christmases past that we will play accompanied by postcards and images of old Keighley. We will also be serving mince pies alongside the usual tea and coffee.
The meeting is upstairs in Keighley Library on Wednesday 11th December. There is a lift for those who need it. Doors open at 7pm and the evening kicks off at 7.30pm, usually ending around 8.30pm. It costs £3 to attend (£1 for History Society members).
Anyone wanting to join for 2020 can do so on the evening. Membership costs £10 for an individual (£15 for a couple), which goes to supporting the work we do and gives you reduced entry to the monthly meetings and access to the members-only events.
If you want to see what the History Society got up to in 2019, have a look through this presentation. If you are interested in joining in with or supporting what we do, please consider becoming a member for 2020. Come along to any of our monthly meetings or see the Support Us page on the website.
