Cliffe Castle Museum
Encyclopedia
Cliffe Castle Museum, Keighley
, West Yorkshire, England, is a local heritage museum which opened in the grand, Victorian, neo-Gothic Cliffe Castle in 1959. The museum is the successor to Keighley Museum which opened in Eastwood House, Keighley, in ca.1892. There is a series of galleries dedicated to various aspects of local heritage, and to displaying the house itself. Entrance to the museum is free of charge.
of Kendal
, a gothic revivalist. The Butterfields, a textile manufacturing
family, bought Cliffe Hall in 1848. Henry Butterfield transformed the building by adding towers, a ballroom
and conservatories
from 1875 to 1880, re-naming it Cliffe Castle in 1878. He decorated the building with the griffin
motif, which he had adopted as a heraldic crest
.West Yorkshire Archaeology Service, Historic Houses of West Yorkshire: Cliffe Castle Keighley leaflet, 1995.
In 1949 the building and grounds were bought by Keighley Corporation with the assistance of Sir Bracewell Smith, a local benefactor who in 1955 paid for the conversion of the house for public use. The house had been gable
d in the neo-gothic style, with tall towers each end, and great conservatories
. In the interests of modernisation, the back tower was taken down, and the front one shortened. The high Flemish gables and other decorations were removed from the roof, and the conservatories
demolished. The service rooms were replaced by the octagonal art gallery, which is a 1950s building. The exterior fantasy design was lost forever; however some of the neo-gothic interior has been recreated recently.
The window was designed by Powells of Leeds
. The top roundel features a copy of Raphael
's Madonna and Child
. All ten main lights of the window once contained Victorian figures in Tudor
costume, but most of these were removed by Frederick Butterfield, to be replaced with clear lights or small roundels.
and Empress Eugenie
.
-making which continued into the 20th century.
.
animals and birds. There is a family of tawny owl
s and a birdsong display.
Sadly, the mounted emu
given by Ilkley
Museum in 1928 is no longer evident, but there are many other fine examples of the taxidermist's
craft.
and incorporates collections from several museums in the Bradford area.
It includes the cherished Ellison Collection, given by Ilkley
Museum in 1928.
Very few of the collections are named in the display.
Some of the more glamorous specimens are from the Hinchcliffe Collection. This comprises 800 specimens from the Gem Rock Museum at Heaton
, Bradford
, bought with grants and public subscription from George Hinchcliffe in 1984. The display explains how minerals are different from rocks
, and has sections about: mineral
colour; streak
; hardness; magnetism
; fluorescence
; fracture
; chemical classification
; crystal
shape, crystallisation, chemistry and occurrence.
There are over a thousand specimens here, including a display of glowing rocks. It is "still considered one of the best displays between London and Edinburgh".
ian belief in the afterlife
.
stained glass
in the country.
Hen Pecked Club's peace box. This is an adult-sized wooden rocking cradle
, supposedly for soothing nagging wives
instead of babies. It had humorous rules and was displayed in galas
, but it is not known whether it was used. The club used to meet at the Royal Hotel, Damside, and was started by Henry Hargreaves Thompson, who was landlord in 1861. The pub became the Royal Oak in 1998.
area.
Keighley
Keighley is a town and civil parish within the metropolitan borough of the City of Bradford in West Yorkshire, England. It is situated northwest of Bradford and is at the confluence of the River Aire and the River Worth...
, West Yorkshire, England, is a local heritage museum which opened in the grand, Victorian, neo-Gothic Cliffe Castle in 1959. The museum is the successor to Keighley Museum which opened in Eastwood House, Keighley, in ca.1892. There is a series of galleries dedicated to various aspects of local heritage, and to displaying the house itself. Entrance to the museum is free of charge.
The history of the museum
It is believed that Keighley Museum was established in 1892, because that is when its first location, Eastwood House, Keighley, was purchased for the public.Information from museum staff. In 1950 the local benefactor Sir Bracewell Smith purchased Cliffe Castle, and had it redesigned as a museum and art gallery for the people of Keighley.Leaflet: Cliffe Castle Museum, 2007. The museum re-opened as Cliffe Castle Museum and Art Gallery in 1959.The Cliffe Castle building
The original Cliffe Hall was built by Christopher Netherwood between 1828 and 1833, and designed by George WebsterGeorge Webster (architect)
George Webster was born in Kendal, Westmorland, England in 1797, son to Francis Webster, a prominent local stonemason turned architect...
of Kendal
Kendal
Kendal, anciently known as Kirkby in Kendal or Kirkby Kendal, is a market town and civil parish within the South Lakeland District of Cumbria, England...
, a gothic revivalist. The Butterfields, a textile manufacturing
Textile industry
The textile industry is primarily concerned with the production of yarn, and cloth and the subsequent design or manufacture of clothing and their distribution. The raw material may be natural, or synthetic using products of the chemical industry....
family, bought Cliffe Hall in 1848. Henry Butterfield transformed the building by adding towers, a ballroom
Ballroom
A ballroom is a large room inside a building, the designated purpose of which is holding formal dances called balls. Traditionally, most balls were held in private residences; many mansions contain one or more ballrooms...
and conservatories
Conservatory (greenhouse)
A conservatory is a room having glass roof and walls, typically attached to a house on only one side, used as a greenhouse or a sunroom...
from 1875 to 1880, re-naming it Cliffe Castle in 1878. He decorated the building with the griffin
Griffin
The griffin, griffon, or gryphon is a legendary creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle...
motif, which he had adopted as a heraldic crest
Crest (heraldry)
A crest is a component of an heraldic display, so called because it stands on top of a helmet, as the crest of a jay stands on the bird's head....
.West Yorkshire Archaeology Service, Historic Houses of West Yorkshire: Cliffe Castle Keighley leaflet, 1995.
In 1949 the building and grounds were bought by Keighley Corporation with the assistance of Sir Bracewell Smith, a local benefactor who in 1955 paid for the conversion of the house for public use. The house had been gable
Gable
A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of a sloping roof. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system being used and aesthetic concerns. Thus the type of roof enclosing the volume dictates the shape of the gable...
d in the neo-gothic style, with tall towers each end, and great conservatories
Conservatory (greenhouse)
A conservatory is a room having glass roof and walls, typically attached to a house on only one side, used as a greenhouse or a sunroom...
. In the interests of modernisation, the back tower was taken down, and the front one shortened. The high Flemish gables and other decorations were removed from the roof, and the conservatories
Conservatory (greenhouse)
A conservatory is a room having glass roof and walls, typically attached to a house on only one side, used as a greenhouse or a sunroom...
demolished. The service rooms were replaced by the octagonal art gallery, which is a 1950s building. The exterior fantasy design was lost forever; however some of the neo-gothic interior has been recreated recently.
Entrance vestibule
The vestibule and staircase show the Victorian eclectic Gothic Revivalist taste. The hammer beam roof over the staircase imitates the 15th century, the staircase window the 14th century, and the vestibule arches the 13th century.The window was designed by Powells of Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
. The top roundel features a copy of Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
's Madonna and Child
Madonna and Child (Raphael)
The Madonna and Child is a painting finished around 1504 by the Italian High Renaissance painter Raphael. It is housed in the Norton Simon Museum of Art in Pasadena, California....
. All ten main lights of the window once contained Victorian figures in Tudor
Tudor period
The Tudor period usually refers to the period between 1485 and 1603, specifically in relation to the history of England. This coincides with the rule of the Tudor dynasty in England whose first monarch was Henry VII...
costume, but most of these were removed by Frederick Butterfield, to be replaced with clear lights or small roundels.
Great Drawing Room
In the vestibule and reception rooms are life-size portraits of Napoleon IIINapoleon III of France
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte was the President of the French Second Republic and as Napoleon III, the ruler of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I, christened as Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte...
and Empress Eugenie
Eugénie de Montijo
Doña María Eugenia Ignacia Augustina de Palafox-Portocarrero de Guzmán y Kirkpatrick, 16th Countess of Teba and 15th Marquise of Ardales; 5 May 1826 – 11 July 1920), known as Eugénie de Montijo , was the last Empress consort of the French from 1853 to 1871 as the wife of Napoleon III, Emperor of...
.
Working Landscapes gallery
This gallery displays local crafts and trades of the past. There is a video of clogClog (shoe)
A clog is a type of footwear made in part or completely from wood.The Oxford English Dictionary defines a clog as a "thick piece of wood", and later as a "wooden soled overshoe" and a "shoe with a thick wooden sole"....
-making which continued into the 20th century.
Airedale gallery
The display shows how the River Aire was formed, and shows fossils of its earliest animals.Archaeology Area gallery
Besides the exhibits shown below, this display features the Silsden Roman treasureSilsden Hoard
The Silsden Hoard is an assemblage containing 27 gold coins of late British Iron Age date and a Roman finger ring.-Discovery:The hoard was discovered in 1998 by Jeff Walbank using a metal detector in a field at Silsden in West Yorkshire, England. The hoard was declared to be treasure before being...
.
Natural history gallery
This was once the Butterfields' ballroom, and this is where the white lace 1880s dress in the Costume gallery was worn. It is now full of mountedTaxidermy
Taxidermy is the act of mounting or reproducing dead animals for display or for other sources of study. Taxidermy can be done on all vertebrate species of animals, including mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians...
animals and birds. There is a family of tawny owl
Tawny Owl
The Tawny Owl or Brown Owl is a stocky, medium-sized owl commonly found in woodlands across much of Eurasia. Its underparts are pale with dark streaks, and the upperparts are either brown or grey. Several of the eleven recognised subspecies have both variants...
s and a birdsong display.
Sadly, the mounted emu
Emu
The Emu Dromaius novaehollandiae) is the largest bird native to Australia and the only extant member of the genus Dromaius. It is the second-largest extant bird in the world by height, after its ratite relative, the ostrich. There are three subspecies of Emus in Australia...
given by Ilkley
Ilkley
Ilkley is a spa town and civil parish in West Yorkshire, in the north of England. Ilkley civil parish includes the adjacent village of Ben Rhydding and is a ward within the metropolitan borough of Bradford. Approximately north of Bradford, the town lies mainly on the south bank of the River Wharfe...
Museum in 1928 is no longer evident, but there are many other fine examples of the taxidermist's
Taxidermy
Taxidermy is the act of mounting or reproducing dead animals for display or for other sources of study. Taxidermy can be done on all vertebrate species of animals, including mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians...
craft.
Molecules to Minerals gallery
This beautifully arranged and classified display was created in 1988,Memorandum from A. Armstrong (Natural Science Curator) to Museum staff, 17 May 2002.and incorporates collections from several museums in the Bradford area.
It includes the cherished Ellison Collection, given by Ilkley
Ilkley
Ilkley is a spa town and civil parish in West Yorkshire, in the north of England. Ilkley civil parish includes the adjacent village of Ben Rhydding and is a ward within the metropolitan borough of Bradford. Approximately north of Bradford, the town lies mainly on the south bank of the River Wharfe...
Museum in 1928.
Very few of the collections are named in the display.
Some of the more glamorous specimens are from the Hinchcliffe Collection. This comprises 800 specimens from the Gem Rock Museum at Heaton
Heaton, West Yorkshire
Heaton is a Ward of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, England. It includes the villages of Frizinghall, Heaton and Daisy Hill, extending to Chellow Heights reservoir on the western edge and the Bradford-Shipley railway line on the eastern edge...
, Bradford
Bradford
Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...
, bought with grants and public subscription from George Hinchcliffe in 1984. The display explains how minerals are different from rocks
Rock (geology)
In geology, rock or stone is a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids.The Earth's outer solid layer, the lithosphere, is made of rock. In general rocks are of three types, namely, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic...
, and has sections about: mineral
Mineral
A mineral is a naturally occurring solid chemical substance formed through biogeochemical processes, having characteristic chemical composition, highly ordered atomic structure, and specific physical properties. By comparison, a rock is an aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids and does not...
colour; streak
Streak (mineralogy)
The streak of a mineral is the color of the powder produced when it is dragged across an unweathered surface. Unlike the apparent color of a mineral, which for most minerals can vary considerably, the trail of finely ground powder generally has a more consistent characteristic color, and is thus...
; hardness; magnetism
Magnetism
Magnetism is a property of materials that respond at an atomic or subatomic level to an applied magnetic field. Ferromagnetism is the strongest and most familiar type of magnetism. It is responsible for the behavior of permanent magnets, which produce their own persistent magnetic fields, as well...
; fluorescence
Fluorescence
Fluorescence is the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation of a different wavelength. It is a form of luminescence. In most cases, emitted light has a longer wavelength, and therefore lower energy, than the absorbed radiation...
; fracture
Fracture (mineralogy)
In the field of mineralogy, fracture is a term used to describe the shape and texture of the surface formed when a mineral is fractured. Minerals often have a highly distinctive fracture, making it a principal feature used in their identification....
; chemical classification
Chemical classification
Chemical classification systems attempt to classify as elements or compounds according to certain chemical functional or structural properties. Whereas the structural properties are largely intrinsic, functional properties and the derived classifications depend to a certain degree on the type of...
; crystal
Crystal
A crystal or crystalline solid is a solid material whose constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are arranged in an orderly repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions. The scientific study of crystals and crystal formation is known as crystallography...
shape, crystallisation, chemistry and occurrence.
There are over a thousand specimens here, including a display of glowing rocks. It is "still considered one of the best displays between London and Edinburgh".
Sir Bracewell Smith Hall art gallery
This space was created in the 1950s, and is used for a series of exhibitions of artworks.The Egyptians gallery
The display includes a mummy of an Egyptian girl of ca.250 bce, and covers the Ancient EgyptAncient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
ian belief in the afterlife
Afterlife
The afterlife is the belief that a part of, or essence of, or soul of an individual, which carries with it and confers personal identity, survives the death of the body of this world and this lifetime, by natural or supernatural means, in contrast to the belief in eternal...
.
Breakfast Room
This downstairs room acts as an accessible space for themes covered upstairs.Stained Glass gallery
This gallery contains some of the earliest William MorrisWilliam Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
stained glass
Stained glass
The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works produced from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings...
in the country.
Keighley Stories gallery
This gallery aims to tell the story of Keighley. It also, in passing, helps to retain a sense of local identity in the populace, who continue to return from far away to re-live the pleasures of their childhood by seeing again the exhibits which they remember from long-ago visits to the Museum. This is the gallery to which they bring their grandchildren. It is therefore a more important gallery than it might first appear. It includes the KeighleyKeighley
Keighley is a town and civil parish within the metropolitan borough of the City of Bradford in West Yorkshire, England. It is situated northwest of Bradford and is at the confluence of the River Aire and the River Worth...
Hen Pecked Club's peace box. This is an adult-sized wooden rocking cradle
Bassinet
A bassinet or bassinette is a bed specifically for babies from birth to about four months, and small enough to provide a "cocoon" that small babies find comforting....
, supposedly for soothing nagging wives
Shrew (archetype)
In the English language, the word shrew is used to describe a woman given to violent, scolding, particularly nagging treatment, as in Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew...
instead of babies. It had humorous rules and was displayed in galas
Festival
A festival or gala is an event, usually and ordinarily staged by a local community, which centers on and celebrates some unique aspect of that community and the Festival....
, but it is not known whether it was used. The club used to meet at the Royal Hotel, Damside, and was started by Henry Hargreaves Thompson, who was landlord in 1861. The pub became the Royal Oak in 1998.
Mansion to Museum gallery
This gallery, round the top of the octagonal Sir Bracewell Smith Hall, shows the development of the building from a Victorian private house to a contemporary museum. The "Chinese Chandelier", which held the wooden harpies below, once hung in Cliffe Castle.Local Pottery gallery
The displays here are placed in recognition of a past local skill, and a trade which was significant in the KeighleyKeighley
Keighley is a town and civil parish within the metropolitan borough of the City of Bradford in West Yorkshire, England. It is situated northwest of Bradford and is at the confluence of the River Aire and the River Worth...
area.
Other aspects of the Museum
- The Friends of Cliffe Castle is the society which has researched and supported much of the restoration and improvement to the Museum which has taken place in recent years. A leaflet about the society is available at the Museum.
- Education programme: School workshops and trails can be booked for Key Stages 1–3, and occasionally for adult and SEN groups.