The Impact of German Butchers in Keighley

September 15, 2025Bradford Libraries Leave a comment

‘Meeting the Meat Demand’ with Karl-Heinz Wüstner.

Over the summer, the History Society was presented with the opportunity for a talk by Karl-Heinz Wüstner on German immigration to West Yorkshire. With all of our regular slots already filled (and the budget pretty much used up), our solution was to book Keighley Local Studies Library for an extra talk on the afternoon of Wednesday 1^st October. The talk, entitled ‘Meeting the Meat Demand’ will start at 2.30pm and will finish around 4.30pm (time for the talk plus discussion at the end). There is a charge of £2 per person (fee applies to members and visitors).

Karl-Heinz Wüstner is a retired high school teacher from Ilshofen, Germany. As a local historian he has studied labour migration and conducted research on trade and craftsmanship in the Hohenlohe region of Germany for many years. He is a committee member of the Historical Society for Württemberg-Franconia and chairman of a local museum that exhibits painted furniture. He writes books and articles, and has given talks at numerous conferences and seminars.

Karl-Heinz Wüstner: “The continuing industrialisation of Yorkshire in the 19^th century created many additional jobs in wool mills and factories. Industrial centres grew rapidly and the large number of newly arrived workers needed to be fed. German immigrants in particular took advantage of these circumstances. As butchers, they not only offered meat, but also produced a variety of tasty sausages, meatloaf, rissoles and many other products that could be eaten either cold or warm after brief heating. With the introduction of takeaways, also offering hot meals, they broke new ground in food supply and thus established new eating habits.

“Quite a number of such pork butchers settled in the up-and-coming town of Keighley. A whole series of butcher’s shops with more than thirty female and young employees dominated the streetscape. Names such as Andrassy, Pfeiffer, Hofmann and Schneider may still be remembered by some today.

“I will try to explain why the butchers and their families left their homeland and how they were able to succeed as immigrants. I will explore the important role they played in the development of the towns and cities, as well as their personal fates.”

Article and Photos by Tim Neal, Keighley & District Local History Society.

Heritage Open Day 2025

September 6, 2025Bradford Libraries Leave a comment

Buildings, bridges and beehives! The theme for this year’s Heritage Open Day is architecture and all about exploring how we’ve designed and built the world around us.

This year as part of Heritage Open Days Tim Neal of Keighley & District History Society will be giving a talk about Keighley Now & Then, looking a how the town has changed through his collection of Lillywhite Postcards. The talk is free as part of Heritage Open Days and is on Saturday 20th September 2.00-3.00pm, upstairs in the Local Studies Library,

Here are just a few of the postcards and photos that will be used in the talk.

*Cavendish Street Keighley, now and then.*

Elevation of Mansion House 1878
Sections of Mansion House 1878
Floor Plans of Mansion House 1878

We will also have on display some of our collection of Building Plans showing Prominent Keighley buildings which are part of our Archive Collection.

Late Summer Local Reads

August 26, 2025August 26, 2025Bradford Libraries Leave a comment

This is a heartwarming autobiography from former professional Keighley Rugby League player, David “Pete” Adamson, now living in Texas, but still following “the passing game”, that has been such an influence on his Keighley youth, career in the armed forces and as a trainer in his retirement years.

Both David’s parents were from Keighley and though he was born in Wath-on-Dearne in 1942, he returned to Keighley with his mother after the early death of his father. His mother, Mary, was one of ten children and had taken work in the local Keighley mill from the age of 11, crawling under the machinery to pick up bobbins that had fallen on the floor. On returning to Keighley, she returned to the textile trade with a job at Knowle Mill (formerly Heaton Mill) to support herself and her son.

David’s father, Sidney, had played rugby in Keighley and his influence led to David’s lifelong passion for the game. This is a story of hard times and good and how the game supported him and brought joy into his life, even during his army service abroad. David writes about his times as a player for Keighley Albion Amateur Rugby League Club and his professional play for Keighley RLFC.

The book is dedicated to his lovely wife, Miriam, who, when they recently lived over here in Haworth for a while, volunteered in Keighley Local Studies Library. Miriam even joined us recording her research into stagecoach travel from Keighley in the 19^th century, it’s still available, check it out on this website:

https://bradfordlocalstudies.com/2019/11/14/christmas-day-and-the-keighley-stagecoach/

Miriam also produced an index of Brontë images that is used by staff and customers alike. https://bradfordlocalstudies.com/2019/03/12/bronte-images-116-years-of-bronte-studies/

Thanks once again Miriam and David for the generous donation of books to Keighley Library.

The Courage of his Convictions: The Life and Work of George Demaine
by Colin Neville (ISBN: 978-1-0682899-0-3)

This fully illustrated book is number eleven in the Not Just Hockney series of books on the work of past artists in the Bradford district. The full list of titles can be found on the Home page of the website at www.notjusthockney.info Keighley Local Studies Library presently has 2 copies available for loan, more to follow soon.

George Frederick Demaine was a committed Methodist, husband and father; a talented painter, sculptor, model-maker, film set designer. He received his initial training at the Keighley School of Art at the Mechanics’ Institute. As a Conscientious Objector during World War One, he was imprisoned.

Colin Neville goes on to say,

“For those men that enlisted or were conscripted into the armed services, their courage came, not so much in their enlistment or acceptance of conscription into the services, but how they responded later. Their courage came from standing alongside their comrades once the real bloody horror of this war was exposed to them. Millions paid the ultimate price for this.

For George Demaine, the nature of his courage was to stand firm to his principals; principals that shunned participation – in any way, shape or form – that served this particular and pointless war. This was a courage in the face of open, bitter and sustained hostility from all sides.

But unlike the Fallen of the Great War, George lived. He lived to become a creative member of society in general, and in particular during World War Two, when he used his artistic talents to save lives and property from enemy bombing. Commitment, courage and talent of the type displayed by George Demaine always deserves recognition and its place in history.”

As usual, for Not Just Hockney publications, the book is beautifully illustrated, this time with kind permission from John Demaine, grandson of George Frederick Demaine.

Autumn/Winter Season in Keighley Local Studies

August 22, 2025Bradford Libraries Leave a comment

For the last two years, Keighley Local Studies has put on a series of lectures on family and local history by Jude Rhodes, professional genealogist, local historian and accomplished speaker. Jude has covered topics as diverse as back-to-back housing, nursing history and one place studies and a history of mental health and asylums. Each talk has been fully illustrated with a power point presentation and library staff have put out displays of related original documents, gathered from the wonderful Keighley Local Studies’ archive that covers the Keighley district.

By popular demand, Jude is back with us starting in September on a topic close to our hearts, please come along, refreshments are provided. Details on the attached poster.

Keighley Local Studies has a full programme of talks and events for Autumn/Winter, and details of these will be available on this site, on social media and in the library shortly, please look out for them.

New locally based Summer reads in literature and history

August 12, 2025Bradford Libraries Leave a comment

“The Indefatigable Asa Briggs”

ISBN 978-0-00-855641-9 (William Collins, imprint HarperCollins, 2025)

Out on the 14^th August, this first, comprehensive biography of Asa Briggs has received excellent reviews in the press. Find out how this scholarship boy at Keighley Boys’ Grammar School became, “one of the best-known historians of his generation, his name on a cover a guarantee of substantial sales,” champion of the Open University and the WEA.

Written by critically acclaimed biographer Adam Sisman, who visited Keighley Local Studies for local research, this biography is impressive in detail but reads well and entertainingly, as is to be expected from an acclaimed biographer of historians, Huge Trevor-Roper, A.J.P. Taylor as well as other important cultural and literary figures Boswell, Wordsworth and Shelley and most recently John Le Carré.

Particularly fascinating is Sisman’s careful reveal of the developing historian from student through to maturity – from his own background in the newly urbanised non-conformist culture, economy and local politics of his Northern hometown through WW2 events, global travel and study and the influence of other working historians during his time at, among others, Cambridge, Oxford and Leeds Universities. Later, one can also draw parallels with the champions of Keighley Mechanics’ Institute, of which Briggs’ grammar school was a part, and Briggs’ own championing of the value of education for all, through his dedicated involvement with the Open University, the WEA and the Commonwealth of Learning.

Briggs may have felt frustrations in his life that this biography does not ignore, but he still achieved much and was one of the great visionaries who fuelled the meritocratic changes in post war England, widened the scope of educational opportunities for generations, and wrote history that was about the many, and written for everyone to consider and interpret, not just a privileged few. A fine legacy indeed.

Comments:

His work remains significant, and his life story offers valuable insights into the intellectual and social history of his time. Summary comment William Whyte, Literary Review, August 2025

“The historian Asa Briggs was both a jet-setter and a grafter, as this superb biography shows…”

Ian Sansom, the Daily Telegraph, 2 August 2025

“Let Me In: The Brontës in Bricks and Mortar”

ISBN: 978-1-91-422779-0(Great Northern Books Ltd, 2025)

Ann Dinsdale (author and Principal Curator of Haworth Parsonage Museum) and Sharon Wright author (“The Mother of the Brontes”), journalist, and playwright, have joined their great knowledge and expertise and buddied up to produce a lively, beautifully illustrated and fascinating book on some of the buildings that inspired the Brontë sisters and their writing and housed the remarkable and challenging lives of Brontë family members.

Their journey takes them around Britain and Ireland as they get privileged access to private houses and reveal the history of these buildings and their inspiration for the Brontës. Brontë Parsonage secrets and those of their Thornton birthplace are revealed, as are the legends and ghosts of the real Wuthering Heights. We go to Ulster and Cornwall to look at their family heritage influences and these literary supersleuths even follow Branwell on a Victorian pub crawl around the inns and taverns that he visited.

The book is beautifully written in the voices of these two acclaimed authors who have certainly done their homework, providing an entertaining and always well researched read. If you needed any kind of bonus, there is an exclusive interview with award-winning writer and director Sally Wainwright who reveals why and how she built an eerie replica of Haworth Parsonage in the 1840s on the moors for her BBC biopic, “To Walk Invisible” and the foreword to this classic is written by Rebecca Fraser, author and broadcaster. For those of you who wonder where Brussels is in all this, there are masterly plans afoot for a sequel investigation so don’t put away your travelling cape and magnifying glass yet.

Comments:

‘A gripping tour through time with the Brontë house detectives.’ Araminta Hall

‘Personal and poetic, authoritative and richly evocative, this is a biography like no other: a family history laid out in brick and stone.’ Kathryn Sutherland

‘Full of insight, compassion and exciting new discoveries’ Stacey Halls