Bowling green at Whitley Hall

Memories

Over the years we have often printed stories about bowling greens in the Huddersfield area no longer with us but this is a new one I have never previously spoken about. This is at Whitley Hall between Mirfield and Grange Moor also known as Whitley Beaumont Hall.

Former seat of the Beaumont family, the earliest documented hall was erected by Sir Richard Beaumont in the 17th century. It was rebuilt in the Georgian style in the 18th century with gardens landscaped by Capability Brown.

The Rev. Ismay gave the following description of his visit in 1760:

The situation of the house is indeed beautiful to the south, for there is a spacious lawn to the front, containing a Bowling Green with grass slopes, which yields a fine mountainous prospect. The house stands on an eminence and its beautiful situation is much improved by the works and ornaments of art. The gardens abound with avenues, a green house, walks and basons. The Terrace Walk to the Temple, Hermitage, flowering shrubs, serpentine walks and new road to the north are very beautiful.

By the early 1900s, the property stood empty and, following the death of Henry Frederick Beaumont in 1913, internal fittings were auctioned in 1916 and 1917 including an oak Elizabethan mantelpiece dated 1600 which was sold for 360 guineas.

In August 1924, it was announced that the empty hall was to be demolished to allow the coal seams underneath to be mined. However, it was instead purchased by industrialist Charles Sutcliffe. Sutcliffe allowed local scouts to make use of the estate from the late 1920s onwards and they continue to maintain a campsite there. During the 1930s and 1940s, he allowed army training to take place on the estate. Following his death in 1948, the estate was auctioned on 6 October 1950.

The hall was demolished in the early 1950s and much of the estate was then used for open-cast mining

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the family endeavoured to build up and improve their estates in Lepton, Whitley, Dalton, Kirkheaton and Crosland. The last of the family to live at the Hall was Henry Frederick Beaumont who gave land for the laying out of Beaumont Park near Crosland Moor. By the early years of this century the house stood empty with many of its beautiful rooms dismantled and its grounds lapsing into wilderness. Like so many other landed families the Beaumonts found that the upkeep of their ancestral home was too expensive and so they moved out. Various schemes for the future of the house came to nothing and it was eventually demolished shortly after the Second World War when the area was given over to open-cast mining.

After the mining the parkland was restored to something approaching its former glory. Unfortunately, an original deciduous wood was replaced by a plantation of spruce trees which, although they grow more quickly than our native broad leaf trees, are less pleasing to the eye. In early June, the hillside is bright with the flowering of that most common of parkland shrubs, the rhododendron and in their vicinity the remains of a walled garden may be made out.