KEIGHLEY & DISTRICT LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY
WE PRESERVE AND SHARE
The first meeting of the Keighley Co-operative Society was held on this day (9th October) in 1860 at the Turkish Bath Rooms. The meeting was chaired by John Farrar Pickles who was a tea dealer on Low Bridge. Illustration from ‘Half a Century of Co-operation in Keighley – 1860-1910’ by Jos. Rhodes (Fellow of the Institute of Journalists and of the British Esperanto Association), published in 1911.
The History Society gets a mention in the latest edition of ‘Down Your Way’ magazine (available in all good newsagents and supermarkets!). There is an article on one of our recently received collection items – a recruitment leaflet for Hattersley Sons & Co. Ltd. The magazine is also worth tracking down because it features an article by Keighley historian Ian Dewhirst on aircraft visiting Keighley! The magazine also has its own website (downyourway.co.uk).
Just a reminder that the History Society’s monthly guest speaker talk for October is happening this coming Wednesday (10th October). Following his talks on the Romans and the Vikings in Yorkshire, Mark Steel moves on to talk about the Anglo-Saxons in Yorkshire. The talk happens upstairs in Keighley Library. Doors open at 7pm and the talk starts at 7.30pm and lasts for approximately one hour. An access lift is available. Coffee and tea are served. Admission is £3 (£1 for History Society members) and all are welcome.
November’s meeting is the AGM for History Society members only, then December is the return of Kathryn Hughes to talk about rationing in World War One.
As part of the Heritage Open Days weekends, Keighley Shared Parish Church will be open on Friday & Saturday (14th/15th September) for people to come and look around this Grade 2 listed building. Some of the church’s wedding and baptism registers will also be available to view.
Check the Heritage Open Days website for details of more events.
https://www.heritageopendays.org.uk/
These are some of the artefacts from the archive that we will be bringing along to our stall at Keighley Show this Saturday (1st September). Gates open at 9am and the Show runs until 5pm. Car parking is free and Keighley Bus Museum will be running free vintage bus rides to the grounds. Look out for the History Society’s big orange marquee, alongside the Men of Worth Project. To find out more about Keighley show click HERE.
A wonderful example of a recruitment leaflet produced by Hattersley Sons & Co. Ltd. of Haworth has just been uploaded to our Flickr archive. Click on the image to see more. The item was donated by History Society member Mollie Binns.
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.
On Wednesday 8th August, members of the History Society visited the Masonic Hall on Cooke Street. An album of photographs from the visit has been published on our Flickr page.
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.
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!