Cliffe Castle Museum

It is believed that Keighley Museum was established in 1893, because that is when its first location, Eastwood House, Keighley, was purchased for the public. 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. The museum re-opened as Cliffe Castle Museum and Art Gallery in 1959.

Cliffe Hall was built by Christopher Netherwood between 1828 and 1833, and designed by George Webster of Kendal, a gothic revivalist. The Butterfields, a textile manufacturing family, bought Cliffe Hall in 1848. Henry Isaac Butterfield transformed the building by adding towers, a ballroom and conservatories from 1875 to 1880, and renamed it Cliffe Castle in 1878. He decorated the building with the griffin motif, which he had adopted as a heraldic crest. By 1887, the Cliffe Castle Estate had around 300 acres. Sir Frederick died in 1943 and on 21 July of that year his daughter Marie-Louise, Countess Manvers inherited the Cliffe Castle Estate and took some of the contents of Cliffe Castle to…