Entertainment that has captured our imaginations over decades
As we see the arrival of autumn, thoughts turn to spending more time indoors with the changing of the seasons.
And while streaming movies, playing video games and scrolling through social media may have become part of modern society to keep ourselves entertained, the tradition of finding amusement with indoor pursuits dates back through the decades.
Here we look back at some of the images from our archives collection, including the clubs and associations that have helped to provide welcome entertainment.
Highlights include members of the Harrogate Chess Club at the town’s Royal Baths Assembly Rooms, members of the St Peter’s Players amateur dramatic group from Norton and the Appleton Roebuck Women’s Institute looking on intently while enjoying a talk.
North Yorkshire Archives hold thousands of historic photos – you can browse the collection through the online shop.
If you have any further information about any of the images on this page, our archivists would be keen to hear about it. Please email yny@northyorks.gov.uk.
A woman busy at her treadle sewing machine. Date unknown.
Advert for Thomas Hiscock’s ‘Art Needlework Repository’ at Hawes, from the Wensleydale Almanack, 1888.
Harrogate Chess Club, at the Royal Baths Assembly Rooms, 1969. From the Bertram Unné photographic collection.
Martha Dinsdale, of Appersett, knitting outside her home. From the Bertram Unné photographic collection.
A page from a 17th-century guide to playing the flute. From the Feversham/Duncombe Park estate archive.
Members and staff of Harrogate Boys’ Club outside their headquarters on Skipton Road, 1934.
Wedderburn Ladies Tea Club in The Lounge Hall in Parliament Street, Harrogate. From the Bertram Unné photographic collection.
Group photograph of 1st Harrogate Scout Troop taken in 1910.
Group photograph of 1st Harrogate Scout Troop taken in 1910.
Watercolour ‘Going to Robin Hood’s Bay’, in artist Henrietta Matilda Crompton’s sketchbook, 1840. From the Azerley Chase family records.
Members of Appleton Roebuck Women’s Institute enjoy a talk in 1963.
The cast of a production of ‘As You Are’ involving members of the amateur dramatics group, the St Peter’s Players from Norton, in 1953.