Tag: Library

Library Closed for Refurbishment

Keighley Library is closing for a number of weeks from THURSDAY 13th MARCH. The main library will be operating a ‘click & collect’ service, but the LOCAL STUDIES LIBRARY have a different system. Read below for details.

Thursday 13th and Friday 14th March: The Local Studies Library will offer a by-appointment service only to visitors who need to access publications and original records for their research. Visitors will be required to book their visit in advance to use the appointment service. Visitors should then turn up at the entrance on Spencer Street at the allotted time and will be taken up to the Local Studies Library.

Week commencing Monday 17th March: The Local Studies Library will be closed completely for one week to allow for essential collections work. During this time, the team will respond to urgent enquiries via email only.

From Tuesday 25th March: the by-appointment service will resume. This will last for the duration of the refurbishment work which is expected to last for about three weeks.

Please check the library website and social media for updates

www.bradford.gov.uk/libraries

International Women’s Day

Events marking International Women’s Day 2025 are being held at Keighley Local Studies Library next Saturday (Saturday 8th March 2025). Guest speakers include three women familiar to the History Society: author and journalist Sharon Wright, social historian Jude Rhodes and performer and historian Irene Lofthouse. The library will also have special displays to look through.

Details for the day can be seen in the poster, and all of the talks are free to attend. No need to pre-book. Support our local library!

Talk on The Workhouse

Jude Rhodes is giving her next talk in Keighley Local Studies Library (upstairs in the main library) on Saturday 22nd February (2.30pm to 4.30pm). This time it is on The Workhouse. Jude’s talks are always thoroughly researched and informative, so well worth going along to.

Please note, this is a Local Studies Library event, so if you have any questions please contact the library.

February’s History Society Meeting

February’s History Society meeting is next Wednesday (12th February 2025) . The guest speaker is History Society member Graham Mitchell examining the new evidence that both Boys from the Tower were alive after the death of their uncle, King Richard III. [The background image is a detail from ‘The Princes in the Tower’ by John Everett Millais (1878), courtesy of the Royal Holloway Picture Gallery.]

The meeting will be held in the Local Studies Library, upstairs in Keighley Library. Doors open at 7.15pm (please use the Albert Street entrance if arriving at the Library after 7pm). There is a lift to access the first floor. Entry is free to History Society members and is £3.50 to anyone else – 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. You can join at any of our meetings in the Library (cash only please) or online via the society’s website.

Mechanics’ Institute Event @ Library

Keighley Local Studies Library have been in touch with a date for your diaries for the end of January…

“We have an event on Saturday, 25th January that I am sure some of your members would be very interested in. The morning is a one place study of the Mechanics’ Institute with Jude Rhodes, we shall be getting out plans, photographs and other archives out for this in the morning. In the afternoon we have the book launch of Colin Neville’s Keighley School of Art and a talk by him about the Mechanics’ Institute, the art school and its artists.”

Please contact the team in the Local Studies Library if you want any further details.

First Meeting of 2025

Happy New Year, everyone!

Our first History Society meeting of 2025 will be family and local historian Jude Rhodes looking at back-to-back housing as a solution to the rapid population growth during the Industrial Revolution which led to disease in poor social classes, but were all back-to-back housing areas of slums?

This is a HISTORY SOCIETY MEMBERS ONLY meeting, which will be held on Zoom (not in the Library). Details on how to join in on Zoom will be sent out via email a few days in advance of the meeting.

Christmas & Birthday Meeting

Terrific spread in the Keighley News for our upcoming Christmas meeting, upstairs in the Library on Wednesday 11th December 2024. This year we are not just marking the festive season but we will also be celebrating our 20th birthday.

There is the chance to look through some of the donations made throughout the year, a look back at Christmas in Keighley in 1964, a quiz, and of course cake and tea and coffee. There is also the chance to take out society membership for 2025.

The meeting is open to all. We meet upstairs in the Local Studies Library from 7.15pm (please use the Albert Street entrance if arriving after 7pm). Entry is free to History Society members or £3.50 for anyone else. The meeting finishes around 8.45pm.

Free Family History Session

Keighley Local Studies Library has asked us to let people know that they are starting a series of free Family History based sessions in the library. They will be led by genealogist and historian Jude Rhodes, and, if popular, will happen every month.

The first session is on Wednesday 23rd October, from 2.15pm to 4.15pm, and is entitled ‘The Asylum’. Jude Rhodes will take people through the background to the care of the mentally unwell before the building of County Asylums. Discussing the categories for mental illness using admission registers and census returns (please be aware that the terminology used in the past can appear to be offensive today). Using one of her ancestors, as an example, she will give an insight to life in an asylum in the 1900s and how to access records within the 100 year rule.

Please contact the Library for further details.

Weaponry and Japan

A big thank you to Ian Bottomley, former senior curator at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds, who came along to the Library last night to deliver his talk on how the gun was introduced to Japan via Portugal and Goa. Over twenty members of the History Society attended in person, with a further half-dozen members on Zoom and several more guest visitors in person. The opportunity to handle some examples of the weaponry and associated equipment after the talk was much appreciated by many attendees. Photographs taken by Tim Neal and John Rodger.

Next month’s meeting is the members-only AGM (held on Zoom) then we are back in the Library on 12th December for the Christmas Meeting, which will be a joint celebration with the fact that the Society will also be holding its 20th anniversary party.

Upcoming Library Events…

Two events to look out for at Keighley Library…

Saturday 21st September 2024 – The Men of Worth Project are marking the 100th anniversary of the Keighley Roll of Honour 1914-18 and the War Memorial in Town Hall Square by mounting a special exhibition. It opens this Saturday and highlights the names of people omitted from the original Roll, following extensive research by the Project. Andy Wade will be giving a talk at 10.30 am.

Saturday 5th October 2024 – There will be a talk on influential Labour politician Philip Snowden, who was born in Cowling and served on Keighley Council before becoming an MP, first for Blackburn then for Colne Valley. The talk will take the form of a panel, hosted by Alex Clifford with guests Professor Keith Laybourn, Professor Andrew Thorpe and Will Barber, between 2.30pm and 4pm.