Huddersfield Pride – 4 July 1981

Pride in London is an annual LGBT+ pride festival and pride parade held each summer in London.

In 1981, the Pride march and rally were relocated from London to Huddersfield as an act of solidarity with the Yorkshire gay community who were facing harassment by the West Yorkshire Police. The harassment consisted of police surveillance and repeated raids of the popular Gemini Club which the police referred to as a “cesspit of filth”.

The Gemini Club closed in 1981 but reopened under new ownership until shutting again in 1983. 

The Huddersfield Daily Examiner, 6 July 1981, shared a photograph from Huddersfield’s Pride march. This represents the growing numbers of Gay Pride celebrations occurring throughout Great Britain in the aftermath of the Stonewall Riots.

800-year-old ‘hugging skeletons’ are genetically confirmed as Poland’s only medieval same-sex double burial

Two skeletons found in an embrace next to a 13th-century Polish cathedral were both women, an ancient DNA analysis confirms, but their relationship remains a mystery.

About 800 years ago, two people were buried in an embrace in a prominent church in Poland. Now, a new DNA analysis of the “hugging skeletons” reveals that both individuals were women and that they were not genetically related.

The discovery, which researchers say is the first known same-sex double burial in medieval Poland, raises questions about the women’s relationship.

“The discovery of an atypical burial in such a unique setting naturally raised questions about the nature of the relationship between the individuals buried together in a single grave,” Agata Cieślik, a biological anthropologist at the Ludwik Hirszfeld Institute of Immunology and Experimental Therapy in Poland, said.

Mysterious double burial

The skeletons were uncovered during archaeological investigations at the 13th-century Cathedral of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in Opole, Poland, between 2022 and 2025.

One of the individuals had been buried according to Christian rites typical for the time: lying on their back, with their arms placed along their body. The other person had been placed on their side, with one arm beneath the other person’s head, as if in an embrace. Based on the burial positions, the researchers think the people were interred simultaneously.

Typically, double burials of adults are interpreted as married couples. However, assumptions based on body position and physical sex estimation can be misleading. So in a new study, Cieślik and her colleagues analysed the two skeletons’ DNA to better understand their relationship.

They extracted DNA from the bones and reconstructed parts of the individuals’ genetic code, study co-author Joanna Romeyer-Dherbey, a postdoctoral DNA researcher at Kiel University and Yale University, stated. “We then sequence these fragments and use computational tools to reconstruct parts of the genetic code,” Romeyer-Dherbey explained, comparing the process to “trying to reconstruct a book after it has been shredded into countless tiny pieces.”

The DNA analysis confirmed that both skeletons were female and that they were not closely related, making the grave the first genetically confirmed same-sex burial in medieval Poland. But the researchers are unsure why two unrelated adult women were buried together.

Some unusual interments in the medieval period were intended to ritualistically prevent the dead from returning or causing harm. These feared individuals – sometimes called “revenants” – were typically buried in isolation and in unholy ground, and were often decapitated or weighed down with stones. But the women’s burial next to the cathedral walls – a position often reserved for kings and local notables ‪- and the lack of other evidence of protective rituals suggest that these women were not marginalised by society.

Medieval legal and religious sources harshly condemned same-sex partnerships, often punishing them with execution. If these women had been suspected of being lovers, they would not have been afforded such a prominent grave, the researchers wrote in the study.

From a Suffragette teapot to a drag queen’s wardrobe: Gender Stories comes to Walker Art Gallery

Gender Stories is a major exhibition featuring paintings, photography, film and personal objects spanning centuries.

Gender Stories, a major exhibition about identity and self-expression, opened at Walker Art Gallery on 16 May 2026. The exhibition brings together artwork from Grayson Perry, David Hockney, James Tissot, and Antonia Showering, photography by Catherine Opie and Zanele Muholi, new film by Ebun Sodipo and Ree Bradley, and personal objects from a Suffragette teapot to a Liverpool LGBTQ+ football scarf.

The exhibition covers centuries of history through oil paintings, etchings, ceramics, textiles, sculpture and video. Historical works include a watercolour by Sarah Biffin, a celebrated miniaturist who was born without arms and painted using her mouth. Biffin won a medal from the Society of Arts, took commissions from the Royal Family, and spent her final years in Liverpool, where she is buried in St James’s Cemetery.

Charlotte Keenan, Head of Walker Art Gallery, said:

“Everyone has a lived experience of gender, and this exhibition creates space for visitors to reflect on their own while hearing from others. Working with communities across Liverpool has been central to bringing Gender Stories to the Walker, and we hope it will be a place for honest conversation and genuine connection.”

Out In The City will be visiting the exhibition on 26 August 2026.

Thursday, 20 August – Thursday, 27 August 2026 – Put the dates in your diary

SCENE: Manchester LGBTQ+ Film & TV Festival

2026 Programme Coming Soon