History of Ravensknowle Park greens

Memories

The bowling greens at Ravensknowle Park have a long history in the town stretching back to 1921 when the property and grounds were gifted to the town by the Tolsen family.

Ravensknowle Park, sometimes referred to as Knowle Park, is now a public park on Wakefield Road in Dalton. Located within the park is Ravensknowle Hall, now known as the Tolson Memorial Museum.

The park is home to a number of historic items. When the Cloth Hall was demolished in 1929/30, the Cloth Hall Street entrance and clock tower was dismantled and incorporated into the park's distinctive shelter. It also contained the first public tennis courts and bowling greens in Huddersfield.

The Ravensknowle Estate had passed though a number of families, including Sir John Lister Kaye, before being sold to Thomas Wilson of Birkby Grange in 1827 and then John Beaumont of Dalton in 1850. In 1860, Beaumont built Ravensknowle Hall at a cost of over £20,000. The house and estate passed to Beaumont's daughter in 1889, and then to her cousin, Legh Tolson.

In the summer of 1919, Tolson approached the Huddersfield Corporation with the desire to gift both the house and estate to the people of Huddersfield in order that they be turned into a museum and a park, and to act as a memorial to two of his nephews who were killed during the First World War — brothers Robert Huntriss Tolson (1884-1916) and James Martin Tolson (1898-1918).

The park opened to the public on 14 May 1921 and the museum a year later on 27 May 1922. The first green at the Park has been home of the Ravensknowle Park Veterans League bowling team for many years and is now maintained jointly by the bowling club members and Kirklees Council. The second green at the Park was used for public use but as bowling in general suffered popularity it was converted into a croquet green four years ago.