Blog

1. The mysterious monkey lady

   Does anyone know who this glamorous lady with three adorable monkeys is? The photo was taken at Belle Vue in Manchester in – probably – the 1940s, and is from...

   14th March 2014 • Read more

2. Creative Threads

   We’ll be taking part in the Manchester Histories Festival ‘Creative Threads’ day on Sunday 23rd March, and you’re all invited! This is a brilliant opportunity to travel round the city...

   13th March 2014 • Read more

3. Gimme shelter

   The Manchester Histories Festival is fast approaching, with Belle Vue very much in the spotlight, and it’s great to see so much interest and involvement. We will of course be...

   7th March 2014 • Read more

4. A bird in a tree and the matchless Orinda

     This charming little paper cut was found recently between the pages of a seventeenth-century volume of poems. Poems by the most deservedly admired Mrs Katherine Philips: the matchless Orinda...

   28th February 2014 • Read more

5. A very tall story

   The Reading Room clock has returned! It has been on tour to several specialist restoration experts over the last few months who have lavished love and attention on this beautiful...

   21st February 2014 • Read more

6. Oh! How I would squeez my Juice in thee…

   Stuck for appropriate verses for Valentine’s Day? We can help! What about a few lines from this extremely bawdy ballad from the Halliwell-Phillips Collection, in which the lovelorn dreamer imagines...

   14th February 2014 • Read more

7. Monkey business

   By popular request, may we present one of the heroes of Belle Vue Zoological Gardens, the much-loved Consul the Chimp. Consul, who was often dressed in a cap and jacket...

   12th February 2014 • Read more

8. Worth getting out of bed for!

   There was great excitement this morning when we welcomed architectural historian Jonathan Foyle, furniture historian Ian Coulson and furniture restoration expert Tim Garland to the Library to examine the carved...

   6th February 2014 • Read more

9. Howzat?!

   Today is the birthday of famed Lancashire and England cricketer Ernest Tyldesley, who was born in Worsley in 1889. His elder brother, John Thomas Tyldesley, also batted for Lancashire and...

   5th February 2014 • Read more

10. ‘Dreadful havock’

    The North West may have so far got off relatively lightly in the recent floods, but this late nineteenth-century ballad shows that it wasn’t always so. The catastrophic flood of...

    30th January 2014 • Read more