The Duchess of York (music venue) Blue Plaque, Leeds

The Duchess opened in 1985, with a capacity of 250 people, The Duchess of York (The Duchess) became Leeds’s most important grass-roots music venue where emerging bands and artists performed on their way to becoming commercially or culturally successful. The iconic list includes Oasis, The Verve, Radiohead, Blur, Coldplay, PJ Harvey, Muse, Bush, Placebo, Green Day and Pulp.

The energy of legendary music promoter, John Keenan, made this rough and ready pub into a thriving musical scene of the early nineties.

A long-standing campaign for a blue plaque has finally come to fruition, after Leeds Civic Trust, who are the city’s custodians of the blue plaques scheme, approved a nomination. It feels particularly timely to unveil this plaque as Oasis – one of the bands who cut their teeth at this venue – have announced a reunion.

We seek sponsorship for all of our blue plaques and in this case we have some way to go before we reach our £850 funding target. We are therefore asking for contributions of any amount towards the cost of the plaque. We will acknowledge all donations on the booklet that we will produce to mark the occasion.

UPDATE/EDIT 11/09/24: We are so thankful to see all these donations coming in for The Duchess blue plaque. It's thanks to these donations that we are able to honour this grassroots venue and our city's music heritage with a plaque for all to see. We originally said above that all donor names will be included in the handout we will provide on the day of the unveiling. However, we need to send our handouts to print, and don't want to exclude recognition for those who donate after the printing deadline! Therefore, rather than printing donor names on the handout, we will include a QR code on the handout, which links to an online donor list that we can update as new donors come through. This will also allow a larger audience to view the donor list. With thanks once again, Leeds Civic Trust.