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History Society member Colin Kirkham has recently donated some copies of The Keighlian school magazine from the 1960s. This was the school magazine of Keighley Boys’ Grammar School. One edition donated by Colin covers the school’s transition from its location on North Street to a purpose-built site at Oakbank. This edition from the summer of 1964 included several photos taken or supplied by William Speight which compared the old and new schools. These are those photographs showing the school building, the assembly hall, the workshops and the corridors. Our thanks to Colin for his generosity.

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.

Four streets scenes showing then and now. The top halves are postcards from our digital collection, while the bottom halves are photographs taken by History Society member Tim Neal in 2018/19.

As we commemorate D-Day on the 6th June 2019 put yourself in their places by reading a letter, from our Archives, from someone who was there.

Read the first-hand account of the journey and the landing of two men, one of whom settled in Keighley.

Read more……http://keighleyhistory.org.uk/d-day-landing/

NB: This meeting WILL NOT BE AT KEIGHLEY LIBRARY

If you have found our website via Memory Lane in the Keighley News please DO NOT turn up at the Library on the 10th April. We will not be there. This month we aare having an outing and because of the site it is restricted numbers and therefore only available for Members.

Normal service will be resumed for the 8th May meeting. We will be back at the Library with “On Her Majesty’s Service”. A tale of National Service told, as experienced by the man himself, Colin Holt assisted by his grandson.

Today we had the unwelcome task of bidding goodbye to Ian Dewhirst.

Tim and I went along as represenatives of the Society, but other members had beaten us to it. By 10:30 the Church was full to bursting, even though upstairs had been opened. This gave Keighley a chance to pay their respects to one of their favourite sons.

Thanks to the Family for giving an opportunity for complete strangers to join them at such a private time and the Church for coping with the invasion.

The Keighley News has of course covered the Funeral in detail, so for those of you who live away here is the link.

https://www.keighleynews.co.uk/news/17436587.a-final-farewell-to-mr-keighley-ian-dewhirst-photo-gallery/

Today we have had the sad announcement of the death of celebrated historian, author and local character Ian Dewhirst.

 

Ian was a supporter and Honorary Member of the Society, he has always encouraged us and has lead many of our meetings.

His vast knowledge and irreverent delivery, in Yorkshire dialect made him a joy to listen too. His strong support of the town’s library and his belief that local history MUST be kept available in the town will be missed. As will the antics that it sometimes lead him into. These have included  getting into a skip to retrieve tomes from “his” Reference Library that the powers that be had decided were no longer needed in Keighley (he thought different and told them so in no uncertain terms), to being the DJ, and a good one, at a Library Music event last year.

Thanks for the memories, Ian – you will be sadly missed.

As many of you wil know the Local Studies Library is currently out of action, due to structural problems.

THE MEETING WILL STILL BE HELD AT THE LIBRARY, only downstairs., probably the area by the side door.

As the meeting is by one of our owm, Tim, this time it will be an “around the table” meeting, hopefully still with slides, but will still be based around gather information to go with the G L Kitchen pictures.

We will post about further meetings once their is more information regarding the situation.