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Keighley Bus Museum is having an open day today.

The next History Society is Wednesday 9th March evening and will be held in person at the Civic Centre this month for the first time since Covid. The talk is by author Sharon Wright and is on the tragic tale of Lily Cove the lady balloonist. Sharon will also be selling her books on the night. Sharon is also the author of the Mother of the Brontes if any of you were lucky enough to catch her talk on the subject a couple of years ago.

Non-members are welcome to attend for a fee of £3.00 per person (payable on the door) but places must be booked in advance as we are keeping an eye on numbers to ensure people can socially distance comfortably in they wish. Unfortunately if you don’t email to book we can’t guarantee a place on the night. To reserve a place, please email klyhistory@yahoo.com

We will be encouraging the wearing of masks and maintaining a social distance by spacing the chairs out at the venue. The meeting opens at 7pm for a 7:30pm start. Please don’t arrive before 7pm as the doors will not open until then. Please note that we won’t be serving tea/coffee but you are welcome to bring a flask!

Next Wednesday (9th February), Graham Mitchell will be giving his talk “Catholic Revival, St Anne’s and the Amazing Father Russell” to the History Society on Zoom. The meeting is for History Society members only. Members will receive their invitation via email in the next few days.

If you are interested in joining the History Society, membership costs £11.50 (£10+£1.50 admin charge) and you can join via GenFair. Click here.

Over 400 images from our Keighley News Archive have been published on our Flickr site. The photographs were all taken by a Keighley News photographer forty years ago in January 1982.

Prolific local author Halliwell Sutcliffe died ninety years ago today on 14th January 1932. He wrote over 40 books between the 1890s and 1930s. Many of his novels are historical romantic dramas set in the Yorkshire Dales (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 was educated at Bingley Grammar School (where his father was headmaster) then at King’s College, Cambridge, where he read mathematics. He married Mabel Cottrell of Twickenham in 1904, they had two sons, and lived in Embsay then Linton-in-Craven. It was here that Sutcliffe died in January 1932, aged 61. He was passionate about the outdoors, becoming the first president of the West Riding Ramblers’ Federation, and his ashes were scattered on his beloved moors.

The covers are from books owned by History Society member Tim Neal and the portrait is by Ernest Moore (1865–1940), (c) Grassington Folk Museum.

The History Society’s first members’ meeting of 2022 will be on Wednesday 12th January. The guest speaker is Alan Reynolds who will be talking about his historical novel ‘The Baker’s Story’ set in a fictional West Yorkshire town that was based on Keighley. You can read more about Alan and the novel at alanreynoldsauthor.com

The meeting will be on Zoom and ‘doors open’ at 7pm with the talk starting at 7.30pm. History Society members will receive their invitation to the meeting via email a few days before the event. If you are interested in joining the History Society please get in touch or comment below.

The History Society is giving our members and followers an early Christmas present by publishing these rare photographs of Keighley from the 1950s. They are taken from a set of colour slides we recently acquired and show events such as the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and various Keighley Galas.

You can help us out if you have any further information about the images or any memories you can share. Click below to see the full album on our Flickr site.

The latest History Society newsletter comes out this week. This time it runs to a record 18 pages, including a 12-page fully-illustrated history of the Geoffrey Rundle and Keith Marsden-produced pantomimes staged at Ingrow St. John’s Church in the 1950s. It also contains news about the first three guest speakers of 2022.

The newsletter is sent as a PDF document exclusively to History Society members as part of their annual subscription. If you are interested in joining the History Society please click here.

A reminder that next Wednesday (8th December) is our last History Society Zoom meeting of this year. It will be a Christmas Special with a recording of an Ian Dewhirst talk from the archive and a snow-themed quiz! Members of the History Society will receive the email with their invite to attend in the next few days.

It is also the last meeting under this year’s subscription, so if you want to make sure you don’t miss any of the meetings for next year please don’t forget to renew your subs (if you haven’t already). And if you would like to join the History Society then you can join now and attend the Christmas meeting for free!

You can either pay via GenFair or existing members can get in touch with any member of the committee. The GenFair link is here.