Publications for sale

This is the first detailed study to be published of the Fawkes family of Farnley Hall and their estates in Wharfedale and is based primarily on hitherto little used family and estate papers. It traces the origin of the estates, their growth in the early nineteenth century into a major English land-holding, and their subsequent […]

This study of the Moravian settlement at Fulneck concentrates on its origins and development up to 1790 when it began to lose its unique character. It describes the foundation of the settlement as part of the European-wide Pietist Movement, which advocated individual conversion and spiritual rebirth. The hierarchical administration and organization of Fulneck in its […]

Leeds Jewry, 1930-1939: the challenge of anti-Semitism; by Amanda Bergen; 2000 In this study Mrs Bergen uses hitherto untapped sources, including oral evidence, to analyse the response of Leeds Jewry in the 1930s first to the lingering anti-Semitism to which it had always been vulnerable, and then to the subsequent and much greater threat of […]

Dr Dalton’s book depicts reviving activity among Anglican clergy and parishioners in Leeds from 1836. At that time Dissenters had, since 1800, far surpassed Anglicans in spiritual provision for the town’s rapidly rising population. The advent of W.F. Hook as High Church Vicar from 1837 increased the momentum. Leeds speedily became recognised as probably the […]

This year our Miscellany publication is devoted to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with particular reference to Leeds and the West Riding. The Journals of Sarah Mayo Parkes, 1815 and 1818 edited by Pauline Litton have never before been published and thus make a valuable new contribution to the understanding of life in early […]

This year our Miscellany publication concentrates on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and covers a variety of topics.   Jonathan Oates examines Leeds during the Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745 and the effects these turbulent Stuart uprisings had on the people of the town. Once again in its history Leeds could be seen as a […]

Early in the 1940s William Benn, a Thoresby Society member, set about compiling what in effect became an index to the Leeds press. His intention was to extend the work of John Mayhall’s classic Annals of Yorkshire and Frederick Robert Spark’s Leeds Record of Current Events, 1875-79. When he died in 1947 he left behind […]

John Lucas was an eighteenth-century Leeds schoolmaster who left behind a series of jottings of life in the Leeds of his day and which became his Memoranda Book. The Thoresby Society felt that this insight would be a valuable asset to any historian of the city and Dr Jonathan Oates undertook the task of editing […]

Our Miscellany this year covers a wide range of topics. Our new patron, Professor R. J. Morris, offers ‘Whose Time and Whose Place: Searching for the History of Twentieth Century Leeds’. In it he examines the problems faced by historians embarking on a study of the city in the last century. Michael Collinson offers two […]

Our Miscellany this year covers a wide range of topics. Roy Yates’s examination of St Saviour’s Church, Leeds, and the Oxford Movement brings a new perspective to this field of study and his article will, without doubt, become a vital source of reference for those researching the subject. Jewish and Irish immigration have long been […]

Our Miscellany this year covers a wide range of topics. Our Miscellany this year, ranges across the centuries. From the thirteenth century Michael Robson looks at William de Calverley (c.1275-1319); a notable Franciscan Friar. Whilst still retaining a medieval theme John Dixon reveals some details about surprising survivors of the Black Death in Leeds. In contrast, Michael […]

The Thursby manuscripts, transcribed and printed here for the first time, form a remarkable record of a Leeds family, the Thursbys, and their connections and activities in the second half of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. One contains a fascinating account of a journey by Thomas Thursby, a Leeds man, to Lisbon and […]

John Cruickshank’s comprehensive work Headingley-cum-Burley c.1544 – c.1784 is the most detailed study yet published of any Leeds township during the early-modern period. Based on his PhD thesis at the University of Leeds it graphically covers such areas as the changing pattern of landownership and landholding in response to continuing political and economic change, the […]

JIM MORGAN’S MOST COMPREHENSIVE analysis The Burial Ground Problem in Leeds, c.1700-1914 gives a graphic account of a subject frequently ignored by historians; yet it was a subject which, in part, dominated the politics of Leeds during much of the nineteenth century.  The vastly increasing population of the town, spawned by its burgeoning industrial base, […]

Our Miscellany this year, is a wide-ranging volume with subjects from the sixteenth century to the present. The book commences with George Newton’s examination of early coal mining in Leeds from 1560-1700. This is followed by Margaret Pullan’s graphic account of Josiah Fearn, the only Lord of the Manor of Leeds to be hanged. Susan […]

Robert Pounder (1811-1857) was a self-educated Leeds artisan whose two notebooks record not only family information, but also the effect on his life of many of the great events of his time. In the 1830s he took part in the great marches to York and Bradford in support of Richard Oastler’s Ten Hour campaign, as […]

In 1715 Ralph Thoresby published the first history of Leeds. To celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of its publication the Thoresby Society decided to produce two volumes, A Celebration of Ralph Thoresby and Ralph Thoresby’s Review of his Life. Volume One This volume contains a series of articles about Ralph Thoresby himself. Some have previously […]

In 1715 Ralph Thoresby published the first history of Leeds. To celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of its publication the Thoresby Society decided to produce two volumes, A Celebration of Ralph Thoresby and Ralph Thoresby’s Review of his Life. Volume Two [Yorkshire Archaeological Society MS 26] In his lifetime the most famous of the works […]

Mass Observation was set up in 1937 to document the lives of ‘ordinary people’. It was seen as conducting a sort of ‘science of ourselves’. Its first main publication, May the Twelfth:  Mass-Observation Day Surveys 1937, published the testimony of over 200 observers on Coronation Day, 12 May.  From August 1939, as war approached, MO […]

THIS IS THE first comprehensive history of the development of libraries in a UK city or town, focusing on Leeds, Peter Morrish’s volume happily coincides with the celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the foundation of the Leeds Library. The book surveys libraries in and around Leeds from, the Dissolution of the large monastic houses, […]

Our Miscellany this year showcases aspects of the history of Leeds and region since the seventeenth century. First, Catherine and Michael Collinson provide a new study of wills and inventories in the manor of Leeds Kirkgate – cum – Holbeck in the years 1644 – 1669. Their article includes transcriptions of seventeen inventories, with accompanying […]

Our Miscellany this year includes six wide ranging articles. Irfan Shah writes about Louis Le Prince, the pioneering nineteenth century film maker. Robert Demaine looks at a visit to Paris in 1906 by a 300 strong Leeds Choir. Peter Brears presents a study of brewing at Kirktall between 1152 and 1983 and Chris Hindle looks […]

The Society’s 2021 monograph by Robin Pearson, on the Leeds out-townships during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is a thought provoking book, making excellent use of primary source material, and addressing an area long neglected Leeds historians. `Professor Pearson examines the changes at Hunslet, Holbeck, Armley, Beeston, Bramley and Wortley, villages whose growth was closely […]

Peter Brears excellent, lavishly illustrated, work on Temple Newsam and Temple Hirst places them both back in the history of Yorkshire and the nation. The book presents a unique picture of of the rise and fall of Thomas, Lord Darcy, a favourite of Henry VIII, who occupied an important place in the history of early […]

The 2023 volume was released in February 2024, and is a 220 page Miscellany containing seven articles: The Leeds Industrial Dwellings Company by John Townsend; Remembering the Battle of Holbeck Moor, 1936 by Janet Douglas; Private venture schools in Leeds, 1750-1800 by D. J. Bryden; Kirkstall Inventories: the Hinchcliffe Family and Estate by Michael Collinson; […]

Edited by Chris Hindle