ABBEY HOUSE MUSEUM
Opening Hours
Mon: closed
Tues – Fri: 10am – 5pm
Sat: 12 – 5pm
Sun: 10am – 5pm
Last admission: 4.30pm
Address
Abbey Walk
Kirkstall
Leeds
LS5 3EH
Ticket Provider
ABBEY HOUSE MUSEUM
Opening Hours
Mon: closed
Tues – Fri: 10am – 5pm
Sat: 12 – 5pm
Sun: 10am – 5pm
Last admission: 4.30pm
Address
Abbey Walk
Kirkstall
Leeds
LS5 3EH
Ticket Provider
LEEDS ART GALLERY
Opening Hours
Mon: Closed
Tues -Sat: 10am – 5pm
Sun: 11am – 3pm
Address
The Headrow
Leeds
LS1 3AA
LEEDS CITY MUSEUM
Opening Hours
Mon: closed (11am – 5pm on bank holidays)
Tues – Fri: 10am – 5pm
Sat & Sun: 11am – 5pm
Address
Leeds City Museum
Millennium Square
Leeds
LS2 8BH
Ticket Provider
LEEDS DISCOVERY CENTRE
Opening Hours
Visits by appointment/special event only.
Free public store tours are now available by booking in advance. Please call or email us.
Address
Leeds Discovery Centre
Off Carlisle Road
Leeds
LS10 1LB
LEEDS INDUSTRIAL MUSEUM
Opening Hours
Mon: Closed (10am – 5pm on bank holiday Mondays)
Tues – Fri: 10am – 5pm
Sat – Sun: 12 – 5pm
Last admission one hour before closing.
Address
Canal Road
Leeds
LS12 2QF
KIRKSTALL ABBEY
Opening Hours
Mon: closed (10am – 4pm on bank holidays)
Tues – Sun: 10am – 4.30pm
Last admission: 4pm
Address
Abbey Road
Kirkstall
Leeds
LS5 3EH
Ticket Provider
LOTHERTON
Opening Hours
Open Daily
Estate opens: 7.30am
Café: 9am – 5pm, hot food finishes 45 mins before
Hall: Open (Downstairs only) 10am-5pm
Wildlife World: 10am – 4pm
Estate closes: October: 7pm
November: 6pm
23 Nov – 24th Dec: 7pm
24th Dec – 28th Feb: 6pm
March: 7pm
April onwards: 8pm
Last entry 45 mins before estate closing time
TEMPLE NEWSAM
Opening Hours
THWAITE WATERMILL
Address
Thwaite Lane
Stourton
Leeds
LS10 1RP
LOGOS, FOOTER LINKS, COPYRIGHT
We may request cookies to be set on your device. We use cookies to let us know when you visit our websites, how you interact with us, to enrich your user experience, and to customize your relationship with our website.
Click on the different category headings to find out more. You can also change some of your preferences. Note that blocking some types of cookies may impact your experience on our websites and the services we are able to offer.
These cookies are strictly necessary to provide you with services available through our website and to use some of its features.
Because these cookies are strictly necessary to deliver the website, refusing them will have impact how our site functions. You always can block or delete cookies by changing your browser settings and force blocking all cookies on this website. But this will always prompt you to accept/refuse cookies when revisiting our site.
We fully respect if you want to refuse cookies but to avoid asking you again and again kindly allow us to store a cookie for that. You are free to opt out any time or opt in for other cookies to get a better experience. If you refuse cookies we will remove all set cookies in our domain.
We provide you with a list of stored cookies on your computer in our domain so you can check what we stored. Due to security reasons we are not able to show or modify cookies from other domains. You can check these in your browser security settings.
These cookies collect information that is used either in aggregate form to help us understand how our website is being used or how effective our marketing campaigns are, or to help us customize our website and application for you in order to enhance your experience.
If you do not want that we track your visit to our site you can disable tracking in your browser here:
We also use different external services like Google Webfonts, Google Maps, and external Video providers. Since these providers may collect personal data like your IP address we allow you to block them here. Please be aware that this might heavily reduce the functionality and appearance of our site. Changes will take effect once you reload the page.
Google Webfont Settings:
Google Map Settings:
Google reCaptcha Settings:
Vimeo and Youtube video embeds:
The following cookies are also needed - You can choose if you want to allow them:
You can read about our cookies and privacy settings in detail on our Privacy Policy Page.
Privacy and data
Lanuvium and the Leeds Blitz
200th Birthday, Archaeology, Collections, Engagement, Featured, VolunteersLeeds City Museum has been running a remote transcription project to uncover more of the story of what happened to its collections during and after the Leeds Blitz. In this post, two of the volunteers, Jane and Caroline, introduce what happened when the museum was bombed and some background to one of the collections affected.
The Leeds Blitz
On the night of 14-15 March 1941, the Leeds Blitz happened. Locations around the city were bombed including the City Museum, then located on Park Row. At 3.00 am on the morning of Saturday 15 March 1941 a bomb crashed through the roof of the bird room destroying the front half of the building. The bombing caused much damage and destruction to the museum’s collections.
Photograph of the bomb damage at Leeds City Museum
Recently, a notebook was rediscovered in the museums newly-compiled archive which listed items from the archaeology collection that were rescued from the Blitz damaged museum. This notebook contains handwritten lists of objects from the Savile Collection: Pottery, Bronze, Iron, Ivory, Lead and Glass. These rediscovered lists are important today, because they allow us to see which items in the Savile Collection survived the Blitz, either whole or with some damage.
The Notebook
The transcription of the notebook was the subject of a volunteer project running from December 2020 to March 2021. The notebook contains 70 pages of handwriting and some drawings. The writer used cursive script with some abbreviations so careful scrutiny was needed by the volunteer transcribers to decipher the words. The script was written on lined paper with useful headings (e.g. “Miscellaneous Early cornice fragments”) and each found item cross-referenced to page and item numbers from the catalogue of Lanuvium objects documented by A.M. Woodward in 1929. As well as descriptions of the items, the writer noted against specific items those that had been damaged in the Blitz. This information has enabled the compilation of a list of Blitz damaged Savile collection items.
An excerpt from the list describing the damage to a necklace from the collection
This lion-shaped pendant was one of those damaged in the Blitz.
Woodward worked as a Lecturer in Classics & Ancient History at the University of Leeds. His paper entitled “The Antiquities from Lanuvium in the Museum at Leeds and Elsewhere” was published by the British School of Rome in 1929. It was very useful to have Mr Woodward’s catalogue to refer to while transcribing as the handwritten lists included words that I had never met before but are probably well-known in the world of roman archaeology (e.g. “Lesbian Kymation”) and other words that were difficult to identify without context (e.g. “dart-shaped heart of flower”).
It would be interesting to know who compiled the notebook list post-1941 Blitz. It was probably the curator of the museum at that time, H.W.R. Ricketts. After the blast, Mr Ricketts is recorded as saying: ‘I never thought we’d have a “dig” inside our museum. We are still looking for important specimens and making every effort to retrieve them’.
How did these Roman artefacts ended up in the Leeds collection?
Lanuvium, or Lanuvio, as it is called today, lies approximately 20 miles or so south of Rome just off the Appian Way, the main highway of the Roman Empire. Lanuvium was one of the oldest Latin cities. It was a member of the Latin League and remained independent of Rome of Rome until 338BC. The city played a prominent part in helping to defend Rome in wars against other kingdoms and was at its height in the 2nd century AD.
Sir John Savile Lumley was a career diplomat whose hobbies were painting and collecting. Whilst he was British Ambassador to Italy from 1883 to 1888, he led the excavations at Lanuvium and brought his discoveries back to England. In 1896 he donated and split his collection between Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society (as Leeds Museum was known then) and the British Museum. Other finds from his excavations at another site in Italy, called Nemi were donated to Nottingham City Museums and Galleries. As the Savile estates covered large parts of Yorkshire (Hardcastle Crags, Hebden Bridge, Emley Moor) and Nottinghamshire, and the family seat was at Rufford Abbey, we can guess he wanted some of the finds to be part of the civic museum collections of the time.
John Savile (né Savile Lumley), 1st Baron Savile of Rufford by Unknown photographer, albumen print, 1860s, © National Portrait Gallery, London, CC-BY.
What do they tell us about archaeological methods at the time the finds were discovered?
In order to excavate the Nemi site, Sir John secured a licence in 1885 from the landowner Prince Fillipo Orsini with the agreement that 50% of the finds recovered would go back to the landowner. A guess is that something similar would have happened with the site at Lanuvium. Once Prince Orsini realised how valuable the Nemi findings were, he wanted to go back on this agreement and keep them for himself to sell them to various collectors. The interesting aspect here is that Sir John stopped work as he didn’t want the finds just to be sold off piecemeal for profit and scattered widely. It was unusual at the time to see the value of keeping finds intact, cataloguing them and keeping them in the public domain. Perhaps Sir John was forward thinking in keeping the collections he donated intact so that people could focus on everyday objects to understand the past?
The 19th century saw the development of municipal museums in the UK. Leeds’ early collecting focussed on natural science, as well as archaeology. As cities like Leeds grew in importance, so did the museums, and collecting practices developed. Working on transcribing the inventory of finds from Lanuvium which were on display and damaged in the Blitz has led us as volunteers to consider bigger questions.
As the museum celebrates its 200 year anniversary, do we have the right to keep these collections in Leeds?
By Jane Collins and Caroline Elvin
The volunteers have written a second blog about their experience transcribing the notebook. Read their Transcribing the Past blog here.