New exhibition shows 400 years of Leeds history

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the city’s Royal Charter awarded by King Charles I, introducing the freedom to begin the journey towards self governance and city status.

Leeds City Library used their huge collection containing the history of the past 400 years as well as earlier pieces too which they have displayed. They offer a range of special and rare pieces including 17th century manuscripts to football fanzines, photographs, letters, memoirs, newspapers, books and plenty more.

Sally Hughes who is involved in the Heritage and Research and is one of three that curated the items involved in the exhibition said: “We have taken the brief of 400 years and we have used it to highlight what we have in our public Leeds Library collection which I don’t think people know we have, we have amazing West Yorkshire archives but we have thousands of publicly accessible collections that people never see so this is a great opportunity to show what we have got.”

The exhibition has had lots of people come in since the original launch which happened last Wednesday and they received lots of lovely evaluations from people who attended referred to it as a “lovely collection, took me back in time” and – “very cool books, just a joy to see.”

Source: Millie Dickson | All Rights Reserved

The pieces hand picked by Sally Hughes and her team include tiny handwritten letters with drawings on, one from which was from the artist John Atkinson Grimshaw’s son which shows a hand written letter to his teacher which you can read closely at the exhibition. Memoranda books of John Lucas containing a diary like format with the written history of the city and many other original letters. Sally Hughes made clear that the things on display are “only a tiny portion of what we’ve got but we hoped its representative of what we’ve got as a whole”.

One member of the public who visited the exhibition said: “I think the history of Leeds is important as we live here so knowing the past helps us appreciate how the city has changed.”

Another member of the public said: “I think it is really beneficial not only for locals who are interested but also for university students moving to a city you aren’t familiar with it could be interesting to find out more.”