120 Years of Keighley Library

August 20, 2024Bradford Libraries Leave a comment

As many of you will know, Keighley Library is 120 years old this year. It was the first library in England to be financed by the Scottish American billionaire and educational philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie and is an architectural gem of the town. It opened its doors on 20 August 1904 and to celebrate this milestone, staff are launching a programme of events for the next 12 months. All details will be published in due course on this web site.

To start the programme, however, the library was fortunate enough to host a talk given by the Keighley & District Local History Society with a very fine speaker, committee member, Tim Neal. Tim had done a great deal of research from the Society’s own archives and local contacts. He also spent a lot of time looking at the Keighley Local Studies library history archive.

The talk was lavishly illustrated with a slide presentation that made the most of the archive records used and reflected the thoroughness of Tim’s research as he concentrated on key dates and developments in Keighley Library’s history up to the present day. However, if this all sounds a bit dusty bookish, I can assure you that the audience thought very differently and speaking to a few of the fifty-five audience members afterwards, it was clear that Tim captured and stimulated interest not just in Keighley’s library but in the development of libraries in general that also reflects changes in culture and society and of course in technology. Similarly, and in true Dr Ian Dewhirst MBE fashion, we were also treated to humorous anecdotes and observations of the strange and wonderfully quirky.

This quite brilliant and entertaining talk, we are pleased to announce, will be repeated later this year on 30^th November at Keighley Library on a full day of 120 years’ celebrations, please look out for more details in the future. In the meantime, we should like to thank Tim Neal and Joyce Newton, committee members, and all those who supported the event.

If anyone is interested in pursuing the library history of the district itself, copies of Bob Duckett’s fully illustrated recently published book, “150 Years of Bradford Free Libraries 1872-2022”, is still available for sale in libraries at a modest price of £9.99. It is also available for reference and loan within Bradford Libraries, (Bradford Libraries, 2023, ISBN 978-1-7390826-0-4).

Keighley Local History Society is very popular in the district and has a lively programme of events and talks with an excellent web site that is updated regularly, showcasing an online archive with thousands of images: www.keighleyhistory.org.uk

Keighley Local Studies Team

Highfield School Reunion

July 26, 2024Bradford Libraries 1 Comment

Around 2009, David Kirkley and Jan Rotherham founded a heritage group with the aim of preserving photos and memorabilia from ALL schools in the Keighley area for the benefit of future generations. David sadly passed away suddenly in March 2023. The collection was kindly gifted to Keighley Local Studies Library at the start of 2024. We thought that this archive needed to be shared and the best way to achieve this would be to hold a reunion, starting with Highfield School.

So, anyone who went to Highfield School between 1912-2000, please come along and join us! See if you can spot yourself on a photo in our display, your friends, your parents or even your grandparents.

Along the way you will find out which teachers were the dinner ladies’ favourites and were rewarded with extra chips, also who has confessed to flooding the school 4 times!

Yorkshire Day at Keighley Local Studies Library

July 24, 2024July 26, 2024Bradford Libraries 1 Comment

The Yorkshire Dialect Society is staging an event at Keighley Local Studies Library on Saturday, August 3, between 2pm and 4pm.

Anyone is welcome to attend the celebration, planned as part of events around Yorkshire Day.

Colin Speakman will talk on The Pioneers of the Society. Featured figures will include the linguist, poet and storyteller Professor Frederick Moorman.

And society chair Rod Dimbleby will give a presentation.

There will also be dialect readings and recitals.

Established in 1897, the Yorkshire Dialect Society is the oldest surviving organisation of its kind in Britain. It has members across the world. For more information, visit yorkshiredialectsociety.org.uk

The Local Studies library is upstairs at Keighley Library, in North Street.

A Visual Extravaganza in Keighley Local Studies Library

July 23, 2024July 23, 2024Bradford Libraries Leave a comment

On Saturday 13^th July, Keighley Local Studies Library hosted members of the Keighley & District Local History Society in a full morning session examining the extensive photograph collection and the many other family and borough collections of records that include photographs and all kinds of images that reflect the development of the town and its community. The session started with an illustrated talk and presentation led by Angela Speight, assisted by Gina Birdsall.

Angela then answered some of the members’ questions about the Local Studies Library. Next was a chance to look around the many displays of records put out in the library. Staff even did some non-photographic research too.

Keighley’s collection was started over a hundred years ago with the deposit of around 150 images of the changing town of Keighley, produced as a survey by the Keighley & District Photography Association. This survey produced by Keighley photographers is now recognised by academic researchers into local history photography as one of the finest and unique for its forward- looking approach and its focus on the town’s development rather than nostalgic scenes, (please see earlier blog on this site by Professor Elizabeth Edwards).

Following that donation, members of the Association continued to donate photographs and were supported in this by library staff such as Reference Librarians Dr Ian Dewhirst MBE and Stewart Cardwell, himself a member of the Association. Both Ian and Stewart published books to showcase the collection and to promote interest in the medium of photography as a vibrant source of social history. Ian went on to write a weekly column in the Keighley News called “Down Memory Lane”, that was always illustrated with a photograph or an image of some kind. Over the years, many local people have continued to donate photographs and family collections, even including family albums.

The archive also holds a range of local business collections that show product illustrations and photographs of shop floors, staff at work, on works’ trips and celebrating national events such as Coronations. Our school archives have recently been boosted by the gift of the Schools’ Heritage Group collection and Janet Mawson is currently putting together a display based on the largest collection of images donated for a Keighley school, Highfield School. Janet is also working on a first for the library service, a heritage school reunion on 24^th August, to mark the receipt of the archive, also as part of the Keighley Library’s commemorative events for the library’s 120^th anniversary and as a fitting tribute to one of Keighley Library’s biggest fans, the recently late David Kirkley who was a founder member of the Schools’ Heritage Group.

The Library’s biggest and oldest collection that Angela Speight has been cataloguing is BK 36 that includes thousands of photographs and postcards including an incredible collection that staff believe was from a local photography business in the town as it has pages of numbered photographs with a corresponding numeric index.

We also learned something new about one of our collections, a set of double shot photographs mounted on card were identified by the Local History Society as a set of early Stereoscopic cards that show many Keighley scenes from the 1890s. The cards would be placed in a stereoscope so creating a 3D image of the scene, bringing it to life for the viewer and was a popular form of entertainment in the Victorian era.

Members of the Keighley & District Local History Society seemed to really enjoy the morning and staff even heard the words “excellent” and “brilliant”, and what more could you want from fellow local historians. A big thank you to all who attended and to Tim Neal for helping to organise the visit.

Keighley Local Studies Team

Bradford History Lunchtime Lectures – The Night Soil Men

July 5, 2024Bradford Libraries Leave a comment

Bradford Local Studies Library with Friends of Bradford Local Studies & Archives

‘The Night-Soil Men’

Launch of the new book by Bill Broady

Thursday 11^th July

Doors open at 1pm for a 1.15pm start.

“Set between 1893 and 1937, ‘The Night-Soil Men’ begins with a birth—of the Independent Labour Party– and ends with a death and a strange ceremony high on Ickornshaw Moor. Its main characters are Bradford MP Fred Jowett, Philip Snowden(the first Labour chancellor) and the eternally enigmatic and scandalous Victor Grayson. Long in its research and its writing, the book is wildly ambitious in its scope, with its concerns extending far beyond the political world…” The event will feature readings from the book by local author Bill Broady.

This is a free event, but booking is essential

For more information or to book a place please telephone or email Bradford Local Studies Library, Telephone 01274 433688, Email local.studies@bradford.gov.uk.

Bradford Local Studies Library, Margaret McMillan Tower, Princes Way, BD1 1NN.