KEIGHLEY & DISTRICT LOCAL HISTORY SOCIETY
WE PRESERVE AND SHARE
We’ve just uploaded a couple of new albums of images to our Flickr site.
The first is an eclectic collection of postcards, tickets and other ephemera, covering Keighley, Oakworth, Silsden, Haworth and the area, between the 1860s and the 1960s. Have a browse!
The second is a collection of photographs of classes from local schools from the 1940s and 1950s. Anyone you recognise?
A selection of images from the promotional booklet for T. & M. Bairstow, Worsted Spinners & Manufacturers of Sutton Mills in Crosshills. The 36-page brochure was designed, photographed and printed by Percy Lund, Humphries & Co. Ltd. of Bradford and London in June 1920.
The firm was founded in 1838 by Thomas and Matthew Bairstow, whose family owned the land upon which Sutton Mills were built. In 1920, the mills contained around 450 looms and 20,000 spinning and twisting spindles, employing around 700 people. The entire process of manufacturing, with the exception of dyeing and finishing, was carried out at the mill, using wool brought in from Australia and New Zealand. In addition to the mills, the firm also provided a hostel for up to fifty female mill employees, and an institute that included reading room, billiard room and swimming bath.
According to the entry on the Yorkshire Industrial Heritage website, the firm ceased trading around 1970 with a nursing home and housing now standing on the site of the mill (only one of the original mill buildings remains).
The brochure is part of the Joy Rundle Collection, donated by Julie Eaman and Mark Rundle in 2023. Researched and collated by Tim Neal. The full brochure can be viewed below:
We’ve started uploading some paraphernalia in connection with Bronte Wheelers Cycling Club. Take a look if interested…
This album has just ‘gone live’ on our Flickr site. It’s a 92-page handbook for a 1923 Grand Bazaar held in aid of Victoria Hospital (which at that time ran on voluntary funding). It features a history and photographs of the hospital, details of the stalls and entertainments that made up the five-day bazaar, and adverts for dozens of local businesses. It forms a fantastic window into life in Keighley over 100 years ago.
One of the great stories that relate to the Hippodrome Theatre in Keighley is that of ‘Syncopating Sandy’. Many people will have heard the tale of how Sandy played piano on the stage of the theatre, non-stop, for 133 hours back in 1956 – some people reading this might even have witnessed the feat! Thousands of people bought tickets to see stages of his performance, and some simply gathered outside the theatre in order to be part of the event.
We were delighted, therefore, that in the latest batch of photographs by John Tobin that we have processed, there were half-a-dozen that captured the last moments of the performance and captured Sandy pretty much exhausted after his ordeal. We will be writing up more about Sandy in a future newsletter, but for now we are very excited to share some of the pictures with you. Our continued thanks to Kathleen Procter who donated the negatives and to Billy Stride for scanning and processing them.
At last year’s Keighley Show, the History Society was invited to visit Apsley Motors on Victoria Road in Ingrow. The owner of the business was selling up and we had the chance to take photographs of the premises which had once housed the mineral water and bottling factory founded by Smith Hoyle – S. Hoyle Ltd. The owner also wanted to hand over various documents and ledgers belonging to that company that had been abandoned in the roof space of the old factory.
The visit took place in November 2023 and it’s taken us a while to catalogue everything, but we now ready to share the photographs and documents on our Flickr site…
In June 2022, the History Society received a generous donation of thirty five programmes for productions given by Keighley Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society over a span of almost fifty years.
The collection ranges from “The Yeomen of the Guard”, staged in 1909 by the Keighley Amateur Lyric and Dramatic Society (one of the two societies that came together in 1913 to form the Keighley Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society), to “White Horse Inn” in 1958, which was the first production by Keighley Amateurs not to be performed at the Hippodrome Theatre (which had closed in 1956).
Nearly every single programme between those years was included in the donation and it’s taken Tim Neal of the History Society nearly two years to scan over 1,500 pages that make up all the programmes. Each booklet is between 32 and 52 pages long, and contains details of the production, photographs of the cast, and dozens of adverts for local businesses, and each booklet serves as a valuable time capsule for that period in the town’s history.
Each programme can be viewed in its entirety on the History Society’s Flickr site.