Cliffe Castle Museum - Keighley
There aren't many reasons to visit Keighley, in fact there's an awful lot of good reasons to stay away, but
Cliffe Castle is a definite reason to visit. It's one of those venerable museums that have collections
dating back to the 19th century, a time when museum curators didn't see their job as being to patronise us all.
A time when things were collected because they were interesting and educational,
not because they are worthy and correct.
The museum itself is a very grand millowners house with wonderful gothic features.
The staircase and the stained glass on the stairs alone are worth going to see,
and several rooms internally have been "recreated" to show the opulence of the house
in its prime. But when you have a gem of a building like this, it shows an absolute
lack of appreciation of its grandeur to allow people to park directly outside. You
might as well just leave the wheelie bins there.
Anyway, once you've navigated the traffic nightmare that is Keighley in the rush
hour, park up and chill out in the quite magnificent grounds. The museum was
opened in 1959, but inherited local collections going back a hundred years before
that.
As you walk in a suite of rooms have been created in the style of the late 19th
century; and they really are magnificent. Huge ornate chandeliers, life size egyptian
statues, oil paintings in gilded frames and basically as much conspicuous consumption
as enormous wealth could buy in the late Victorian era.
Then it all gets a bit confusing. There's a major display on the geological history
of Airedale, and another corner of the museum where it tries to be a sort of industrial
come folk museum, documenting the decline of local industries such as pottery and
clog making. That's pretty good, and it even has the last handloom Weaver's loom.
All good, nicely laid out and interesting. And safe, very very safe. Keighley is
now unrecognisable from the place it was even twenty or thirty years ago, and surely
the change in population and the change in the nature of the town over that period
is exactly what a local museum should be covering?
The rest of the downstairs is devoted to a massive gallery that was closed for renovation
when I went. That's a shame, because if it's still as it was a few years ago, it
should contain an amazing display of stuffed wildlife the like of which you won't
see outside the Natural History Museum. As it was, when I went the only stuffed
animals on display were a Yorkshire Terrier and a Lamb with two faces!
Upstairs is reached (if you're not disabled) by climbing an incredible staircase
with a huge stained glass window. It's a bit spoiled by the tatty carpet, but then
it is a free museum so funding must be a bit of a problem. And the upstairs collections
are pretty varied and esoteric. There's some beautiful stained glass, much of it
rescued from local chapels that have been demolished or turned into mosques; there's
a display about the history of the museum; there's a display about the war years
in Keighley; and there's basically all kinds of other local stuff that just doesn't
fit anywhere else. Not terribly well organised, but interesting, quirky and worth
looking at.
After that there's the grounds. I don't know how many acres they cover, but they're
extensive and were all landscaped in the 19th century. They're very well kept too
with great views over Airedale. Bizarrely in one corner was a large enclosure with
a few rabbits in it - don't know what that was all about.
At the back of the house up a hill is the cafe. I couldn't sample the delights on
offer as it was closed mid-afternoon when I visited, as were the glass houses with
an interesting looking cactus collection. And finally, crammed into a corner were
a few small enclosures with canaries and parakeets. Poor things barely had enough
room to flap their wings. It's time that sort of thing was ended - either build
a decent enclosure or let them go.
Which does remind me that when I visited as a child there used to be Peacocks wandering
round the grounds - didn't see any, but I do hope they still have them.