Bowcliffe Hall is located at Bramham near Wetherby, West Yorkshire, England. Built between 1805 and 1825, Bowcliffe Hall is a Grade II listed building now used as an office and event space. The building is constructed of ashlar limestone, under a shallow pitched slate roof to a rectangular double pile floor plan. It is mainly built across two storeys, although the East Wing has been modified to three.
Construction of Bowcliffe Hall was begun in 1805 by William Robinson, a cotton spinner from Manchester. After completing only the West Wing, Robinson sold the property for £2,000 to John Smyth, who finished the estate. Smyth died in 1840 and the house was put into trust by his daughters pending sale. The entrusted estate was purchased by George Lane Fox, whose own house, the neighbouring Bramham Park, had been severely fire damaged in 1828.
George Lane Fox, known as 'The Gambler', was the MP for Beverley. He died in 1848 and was succeeded by his only son, also George, known as 'The Squire'. The latter died in 1896 and was succeeded by his grandson George (his eldest son having become a clergyman) who was MP for Barkston Ash. He renovated Bramham Park and moved back there in 1907. Bowcliffe was then purchased by Walter Geoffrey Jackson, the managing director of mining company Henry Briggs Son and Company.
In 1917, the house was bought by Jessy Blackburn whose husband was Robert Blackburn from Kirkstall, the chairman of Blackburn Aircraft Limited. [1] They raised five children there and he lived there until 1950 following their divorce after the death their son Rob. [2] Blackburn and his family were the last to use the hall as a residential home. As an aviation pioneer, Blackburn built his first monoplane in 1909, making him the first Yorkshire-man to design and produce a powered flying aircraft. Much of his company's test flying was carried out over Filey, Roundhay Park and Brough. Blackburn made the world's first scheduled flight between Leeds and Bradford in 1914, with the Mayor of Leeds among his first passengers. [3]
In 1955, Robert Blackburn died, and following his death the house was sold to the Hargreaves fuel company in May 1956 for office use, passing into the ownership of the Bayford Group in 1988.
Over recent years, Bowcliffe Hall has undergone extensive refurbishment into office space and a corporate and private events venue. The final stage of the redevelopment has included creating two new office suites from formerly redundant buildings; Rosemount [4] and the Cricket Pavilion, [5] and the creation of The Blackburn Wing conference and events centre, [6] Clad in copper with floor to ceiling windows, The Blackburn Wing's design [7] pays homage to Robert Blackburn's achievements. [8] [9]
Bretton Hall is a country house in West Bretton near Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England. It housed Bretton Hall College from 1949 until 2001 and was a campus of the University of Leeds (2001–2007). It is a Grade II* listed building.
Temple Newsam, is a Tudor-Jacobean house in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, with grounds landscaped by Capability Brown. The house is a Grade I listed building, one of nine Leeds Museums and Galleries sites and part of the research group, Yorkshire Country House Partnership.
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Blackburn railway station serves the town of Blackburn in Lancashire, England. It is 12 miles (19 km) east of Preston and is managed and served by Northern Trains.
John Carr (1723–1807) was a prolific English architect, best known for Buxton Crescent in Derbyshire and Harewood House in West Yorkshire. Much of his work was in the Palladian style. In his day he was considered to be the leading architect in the north of England.
Bramham is a village in the civil parish of Bramham cum Oglethorpe in the City of Leeds metropolitan borough, West Yorkshire, England.
Leeds General Infirmary, also known as the LGI, is a large teaching hospital based in the centre of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, and is part of the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. Its previous name The General Infirmary at Leeds is still sometimes used.
Temple Works is a former flax mill in Holbeck, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was designed by the engineer James Coombe a former pupil of John Rennie; the painter David Roberts; and the architect Joseph Bonomi the Younger. It was built in the Egyptian Revival style for the industrialist John Marshall between 1836 and 1840 to contain a 240 horsepower double-beam engine by Benjamin Hick. Temple Works is the only Grade I listed building in Holbeck.
Clifford is a village and civil parish in West Yorkshire, England. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 Census was 1,662. The village is 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Wetherby. Many of the older buildings are built of magnesian limestone.
Bramham Park is a Grade I listed 18th-century country house in Bramham, between Leeds and Wetherby, in West Yorkshire, England.
The Bayford Group is a British company founded in 1919 in Leeds, England. For over 100 years The Bayford Group has developed and invested in a diverse portfolio of companies. Energy has always been the core of the business, from the original 1919 coal merchant business set up by 4 soldiers in Yorkshire, and named after the village where they had been demobbed, Bayford in Hertfordshire – oil distribution in the 60s, energy supply in the 90s to the multimillion pound acquisition of Gulf Gas & Power almost a century later in 2017.
Robert Blackburn, OBE, FRAeS was an English aviation pioneer and the founder of Blackburn Aircraft.
George Corson (1829–1910) was a Scottish architect active in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.
Halifax is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale, in West Yorkshire, England. It is near the east Pennine foothills. In the 15th century, the town became an economic hub of the old West Riding of Yorkshire, primarily in woollen manufacture with the large Piece Hall square later built for trading wool in the town centre. The town was a thriving mill town during the Industrial Revolution with the Dean Clough Mill buildings a surviving landmark. In 2011, it had a population of 88,134. It is also the administrative centre of the wider Calderdale Metropolitan Borough.
George Lane-Fox, of Bramham Park, Yorkshire, was a British landowner and Tory politician.
All Saints' Church in Bramham, West Yorkshire, England is an active Anglican parish church and Grade II* listed building in the Deanery of New Ainsty, the Archdeaconry of York and the Diocese of York. It is part of The Bramham Benefice, a group of four churches serving villages to the east of Wetherby in the LS23 postcode area. The current Priest in Charge is Reverend Nicholas J. Morgan, MA.
Heath Hall, Heath, Wakefield, West Yorkshire is a country house dating from 1709. Originally called Eshald House, the estate was purchased by John Smyth whose nephew engaged John Carr of York to reconstruct the house between 1754 and 1780. In the 19th century, the house was remodelled by Anthony Salvin. Heath Hall is a Grade I listed building.
Jessy Blackburn was an aviation pioneer and one of the first women to fly a British monoplane.
Bramham cum Oglethorpe is a civil parish in the metropolitan borough of the City of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It contains 40 listed buildings that are recorded in the National Heritage List for England. Of these, nine are listed at Grade I, the highest of the three grades, two are at Grade II*, the middle grade, and the others are at Grade II, the lowest grade. The parish contains the village of Bramham and the surrounding area. In the parish is Bramham Park, a country house, which is listed together with a number of structures in its grounds. The other listed buildings include houses, cottages and associated structures, farmhouses and farm buildings, a church, the remains of a medieval cross, a disused windmill, a former aircraft hangar, and a war memorial.
Elland Town Hall is a municipal building in Southgate, Elland, West Yorkshire, England. The structure, which was primarily used as an events venue, is a Grade II listed building.