KEIGHLEY & DISTRICT LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY
WE PRESERVE AND SHARE
Great coverage for Wednesday’s History Society meeting in this week’s Keighley News. The talk is about how the Ice Age influenced, and was influenced by, the local landscape, to be given by Philippa McHugh and Alan Pearson. The meeting is on Wednesday 10th September 2025 at 7.15pm in the Civic Centre on North Street. All welcome.
This month’s History Society meeting includes a talk by History Society members Philippa McHugh and Alan Pearson, who take us on a journey through the local area during the most recent ice age. Discover which areas the ice covered, where the lakes formed and the rivers flowed, and the evidence it has left behind.
And why not go see the ‘Ice Age Art Now’ exhibition at Cliffe Castle Museum (on until 14th September) as a “warm up” for this talk?
The History Society meeting is on Wednesday 10th September 2025 and will be held in the Main Hall, upstairs in Keighley Civic Centre. Doors open at 7.15pm. There is a lift to access the first floor. Entry is free to History Society members and is £3.50 to anyone else (pay on the door – cash only) – all are welcome to attend. The meeting is scheduled to finish around 8.45pm. Members of the History Society also have the option of joining the meeting online via Zoom.
Membership of the History Society costs £15 for the calendar year. If you join at this meeting you will get membership for the rest of this year and all of 2026 (cash only please).
The Orange Gazebo, that makes us standout, has had a tough time recently.
Until last Saturday, 30th Aug, it was confined within the Keighley Bus Museum. They have been kindly storing it for the Society and it was in there during the fires and had to remain there, with all the buses keeping it company, while extra Fire regulations were put in place. But the valiant Bus Team managed to arrange for its release for last Sunday’s KBMT Fundraising Day so give them a very big clap please.
So we got the roof up and brilliant – no holes!
Again no holes in the sides, but they were covered in soot- yuck! But we decided the Orange Gazebo had earned its battle scars and at least we wouldn’t be doing the Keighley Show with two garden gazebos.
But Steve to the rescue. He looks to have performed miracles with the sides. So another big clap for him please.
The History Society will have its usual tent and displays at Keighley Show this weekend (Saturday 6th September 2025). Please come along and say hello. Plus if you are interested in supporting the society by joining us, you can join for 2026 at the show and get the rest of 2025 thrown in (£15 for one person, £20 for two people at the same address – cash only please).
Keighley Local Studies Library is hosting a session on ‘5 Strategies for Researching Yorkshire Family History’, led by respected local and family historian Jude Rhodes, on Wednesday 10th September at 2.15pm. Free to attend. See poster for more details.
The History Society will have stalls at two events coming up over the next couple of weekends.
On Sunday 31st August we will be at the Keighley Bus Museum fundraising event in Keighley College car park. The event runs from 10am to 3pm. See the poster for more details.
On Saturday 6th September we will be at Keighley Show, between 10am and 4pm. See the poster for more details, including the chance to buy cheaper tickets in-advance.
Please come along and say hello, and support these local events.
Great coverage of next week’s History Society meeting in this week’s Keighley News. The meeting focusses on largely-forgotten crime writer Austin Lee, who was born in Cowling and educated at Keighley Boys Grammar School. During the 1950s and 1960s he published various whodunnit novels, many featuring amateur detective Miss Flora Hogg (including ‘Miss Hogg and the Bronte Murders’, with some very evocative descriptions of Haworth in the 1950s).
Speakers will be writer and journalist Sharon Wright, Bronte Parsonage Principal Curator Ann Dinsdale, and History Society committee member Tim Neal, talking about how they became converts to Lee’s cause. There will also be a small display about Austin Lee, courtesy of Keighley Local Studies Library.
The meeting is on Wednesday 13th August 2025, at 7.15pm in the Keighley Civic Centre on North Street. All are welcome to come along. Entry is £3.50 or free to History Society members. History Society members can also join the meeting via Zoom if they prefer. The meeting ends around 8.45pm.
This month’s History Society meeting is on Wednesday 13th August, upstairs in the Civic Centre on North Street at 7.15pm. The subject of the talk is ‘Austin Lee: Man of Mystery’. Austin Lee was born in Cowling and attended Keighley Boys’ Grammar School, and went on to have multiple careers including being an outspoken vicar, a barman, a teacher and the author of a series of cosy-crime novels featuring amateur sleuth Miss Flora Hogg. It’s a bit of team effort this time, with speakers Sharon Wright, Ann Dinsdale and Tim Neal, all of whom are keen to resurrect the profile of this most astonishing Keighley man.
Doors open at 7.15pm at the Civic Centre. All are welcome. Entry is free for History Society members and £3.50 for anyone else. Keighley Local Studies Library have copies of many of Austin’s books if anyone fancies reading them.
August’s History Society meeting (on 13th August 2025) explores the life and works of vicar and crime novelist Austin Lee. If you fancy any summer reading in advance of the meeting, plenty of Austin’s books are available in Keighley Local Studies Library (just ask at the desk) – including some he wrote under his pen names of Julian Callender or John Austwick. We recommend ‘Murder in the Borough Library’ – set in a library inspired by Keighley’s own library (which is where Austin wrote it!).
A big thank you to John and Mary Hindle from the Roman reenactment group The Tungrians, who spoke to the History Society last night. They also brought examples of costume and armour along. They have their own website and Facebook page if you want the chance to see more of them and their reenactments. And a thank you to the society members and guests who joined us in the Civic Centre or on Zoom. Photographs by Tim Neal and Anne-Marie Dewhirst.
August’s talk will be a bit of a team effort, as we look back at the work and life of whodunnit author and vicar, the Reverend Austin Lee. Born in Keighley, with his murder-mystery novels often set in recognisable locations, Lee was a popular writer in the 1950s, and whose own story is full of twists and turns.