A Walk in the Park
Parks are a great asset and we have several on our doorstep. Our closest is Towneley Park, at the end of our street! Just over the Pennine watershed from our Lancashire home, lies Cliffe Castle Park in Keighley. Keighley lies in the West Riding of Yorkshire. A beautiful historic house dominates the park; Cliffe Castle itself.
Once home to the wealthy Butterfield family. The estate was laid out as parkland and formal gardens. Much of the once 300 acre park still remains. It is beautiful to wander round on a cold but sunny, March Day. You enter through the imposing gateway, from the Skipton Road, itself flanked by large and ostentatious Victorian villas. There is an ornate gas lamp which hangs over the gate to light the way for carriages entering the drive. Its design echoes ones designed for the Thames Embankment in London.
Next to the gate is a beautiful lodge, in the same style, where the gatekeeper would have lived.
Right now, the lawn behind the lodge is filled with masses of yellow daffodils.
No park would be complete without benches for you to rest a while or eat a leisurely picnic. Today however, it was a little cold for that.
There is also a bandstand with a decorated backdrop, undoubtedly a more modern addition!
The Official Guide to the Park has this to say:
“The gardens date back to 1878 when a Bradford Surveyor, Mr. Murray, is employed to landscape the grounds and plant trees, mainly lime, chestnut, and sycamore. Copying the garden at nearby Oakworth, a rockery and grotto are built, and two three-tier carved marble fountains brought from Italy, which, together with the pond, all have limestone rock work around them. The garden was boarded by a glasshouse range designed by local architect George Smith and constructed by Messenger & Co of Loughborough. They were made from cast iron and wood and finished in green, cream, and gold estate colours. The centrepiece of the range was the Dome House containing a well-grown Norfolk Island pine. Each section of the range was devoted to a different plant collection and included exotics such as bananas. The houses stepped upwards towards the vineries where grapes were grown.
In 1956 Professor Sir Albert Richardson visited Cliffe Castle and commented, “I think the gardens with their autumn tints are among the best of their kind for landscape gardens.”
The original glasshouses were demolished in the 1920s and later replaced in the 1960s with a modern aluminium greenhouse. The Dome House and range were recreated with Heritage Lottery Funding in 2017 on the original floor plan.
Natural history
Cliffe Castle Park in Bradford is home to many species of wildlife. Common species include foxes, badgers, rabbits, hedgehogs, and deer. There are also many species of birds present in the park, such as woodpeckers, finches, and robins. In addition, the park is home to a variety of amphibians and insects, like frogs, toads, and butterflies.”
Source: Bradford City Council Parks and Gardens.
The lamp in front of the portico in the shot above right is identical to the ones on the Thames Embankment in London. It is the only one outside England’s capital.
I hope that you enjoyed this photo blog. If so please message me and say so. I’m always happy to chat.
TECHNICAL INFO: Being a ‘recessionista photographer’ all shots were made on an old Canon 350D digital camera (Rebel XT). The camera was gifted to me by my pro photographer husband. He had bought it as part of a job lot of scrap cameras as 'spares and repairs’. The camera works very well. The lens used was a 'scrap’ EF-S 10-18mm f4.5-5.6 IS STM lens, also bought cheaply for 'spares and repairs’. There are slight marks on the front element but in reality they affect the image quality little. All shots were made shooting RAW in monochrome mode and processed using Canon’s DPP 4 program (free download if you input you camera’s serial number). Text was added using Canon’s Zoom Browser EX (free). Total cost for the kit was £44.
