KEIGHLEY & DISTRICT LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY
WE PRESERVE AND SHARE
Keighley Library officially re-opened on the 17th August 2007, following a £1.1 million refurbishment carried out between February and August that year. Keighley Library is a Grade 2 listed building and was the first public library in England to be funded by Andrew Carnegie. It includes beautiful murals on the walls painted by Alex F. Smith. The Local Studies Library on the first floor is an amazing resource to be cherished by the town.
This postcard from the History Society’s archive is of Devonshire Park in Keighley. It was posted to France on this day (10th August) 110 years ago.
Happy birthday to the Bronte Parsonage and Museum which first opened its doors on the 4th of August 1928. The house was built in the 1770s as a place of residence for the minister at the adjacent St Michael and All Angels church. It was occupied by the Bronte family from 1820 to 1861. The building was gifted to the Bronte Society by Sir James Roberts in 1928 and the Society moved its museum from the upstairs of what is now the tourist information centre at the top of Main Street in Haworth. This is how the event was recorded exactly one week later in the Keighley News. The cutting is from a scrapbook of clippings collected by journalist, photographer and editor George Crowther, many of which are available on the History Society’s Flickr account.
The 30th of July this year marks 200 years since the birth of Emily Bronte. To mark the occasion, various special events are happening this weekend at the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth. This First Day Cover from July 1980 was issued from Haworth Post Office and includes stamps for Emily and her sister Charlotte. All four stamps were designed by artist Barbara Brown. The object is held in the History Society’s physical archive and has been scanned for our digital archive on Flickr.
Lund Park was officially opened on 21st July 1891. The land for the park was given to Keighley Corporation in 1888 by landowner James Lund of Malsis Hall. The park was laid out and planted by Keighley Corporation and was opened to the public by Mrs Lund three years later. The park originally included a bandstand, and a fountain sited in a small lake. The park was extensively refurbished in the late 20th century, including the provision of new play equipment, the resurfacing of all paths, and a new skateboard facility.
One of the albums in our Flickr digital archive is a copy of the musical score for the “Cliffe Castle Gavotte” (a dance piece), composed for piano by German composer Franz Behr. It was commissioned by and dedicated to Henry Isaac Butterfield (the owner of Cliffe Castle at the time). It is presumed to have been written between 1885 and 1886. Keighley local history enthusiast Loraine Petyt asked local musician David Boddy to record the piece and she has made the recording available on her Vale’n’Dale website – have a listen here!
Two glorious dustjackets from the 1930s for novels by Halliwell Sutcliffe. Sutcliffe was a prolific author who wrote over 40 books between the 1890s and 1930s. Many of his novels are historical romantic dramas set in Yorkshire (including a series set in Haworth, renamed as the fictional Marshcotes). He was born in Thackley in April 1870. At the time the family was living at Cross Roads, but then moved to Bingley. He married in 1904, and had two sons, and the family lived in Embsay then Linton-in-Craven. He died in January 1932, aged 61. The covers are part of the History Society’s digital archive.
The Rustless Iron Company was founded in Keighley in the 1890s and was based at Lawkholme Lane for 112 years. They operated under the brand name TRICO and continue to trade today as Trico Vitreous Enamellers, albeit from Bingley. Here are three adverts for the company from across the decades.
This is a magazine published seventy years ago, in 1948. It is the Keighley Parish Church magazine and is celebrating 100 years of that particular building, with recollections of the history of the parish and various adverts from local businesses at the time. Click to see the full album in our digital archive on Flickr.
In Keighley it’s local council elections day today. Here is a canvassing leaflet from the History Society’s digital archive from May 1959.
