OF all the museums or galleries in the Bradford District, Keighley’s Cliffe Castle Museum is probably the one that most defies categorisation.
Part National Trust style manor house, part Natural History Museum, part art gallery, with local history, a two headed sheep and a Chewbacca action figure thrown in - the museum is surely one of the quirkiest in all of Yorkshire.
Based in the centre of award winning Victorian Cliffe Castle Park in Keighley town centre, Grade II listed Cliffe Castle is one of four museums run by Bradford Council, and is free to enter.
But while the other museums - Bradford Industrial Museum, Bolling Hall and Cartwright Hall Gallery, are dedicated to one specific subject (industry, history and art), Cliffe Castle Museum is a charming mash up of every type of museum you can think of.
Built in the 1820s as Cliffe Hall, the building was eventually home to industrialist Henry Isaac Butterfield - who had the building transformed into the more recognisable Cliffe Castle in the 1880s after inheriting the property.
He made his fortune from cloth manufacturing in Keighley, and in 1854 he married Mary Roosevelt Burke, an American heiress and part of the Presidential Roosevelt family.
When you first enter Cliffe Castle, the museum very much seems a product of this family wealth with elaborate chandeliers, huge family portraits and signs of wealth such as a piano and harp.
Other striking items include a conical pendulum clock that was purchased at the 1878 Paris world fair and a stunning Malachite fireplace that was once part of a Russian exhibit at the Crystal Palace.
The recently restored Butterfield Window - a stained glass masterpiece that forms part of the building’s elaborate staircase.
But move to other parts of the museum and Cliffe Castle completely changes.
Yards from the display of the wealth of the town’s richest residents, the working landscapes gallery shines a light on the town’s working classes, and the industries that dominated the Aire Valley in years past, including weaving and masonry.
Elsewhere in the museum there are fossils dating back millions of years, and archaeological items including the Silsden Hoard - a collection of Iron Age gold coins.
One section of the museum’ contains the third most extensive geological collection in the country, with over 1,000 items, while another displays stained glass windows recovered from local churches.
Although many of the museum’s items will be hugely valuable, others are priceless.
In the Sir Bracewell Smith Hall, an area of the museum that was restored in 2013, there is the Stanbury Urn - a Bronze Age burial urn containing the cremated remains of a man, a battle axe and articles of clothing, earrings and clasps.
Thought to date back 4,000 years, the urn was discovered on a farm in Stanbury in 2007.
The hall also includes a watercolour on ivory painting of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, with Princess Alexandria and their children - a piece National galleries would be envious of.
And although not an art gallery, Cliffe Castle has a huge collection of paintings, including a striking one of opera singer Pauline Viardot.
One gallery features an Egyptian mummy and Sarcophagus, while the ballroom includes dozens of cabinets of taxidermied animals - a throwback to the Victorian natural history museums that have, quite rightly, faded out of favour.
The museum has its own working beehive, and it is currently home to a set of mysterious musical stones.
The Keighley Stories gallery includes the most unusual exhibits. A two faced lamb - a victim of a congenital disease, is found in one cabinet, and is surely the most bizarre museum exhibit in the District.
Keighley born Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca in the Star Wars films, is marked with an action figure of the Wookie as he appeared on ice planet Hoth.
Other galleries feature temporary exhibitions, with one currently displaying pantomime costumes from previous productions by Keighley Musical Theatre.
Heather Millard, a curator at the museum, reflected on how eclectic the museum’s different exhibits are, saying: “It is a place where it pays to take your time and wander to take it all in.”
For more information about Cliffe Castle Museum visit bradfordmuseums.org/
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here