KILDWICK HALL is forever assured its own small niche in English literature. Six miles south, the Brontës lived at Haworth; Kildwick belonged then to the Currers and when Charlotte Brontë sought a nom de plume that might pass for a man she chose the pseudonym of Currer Bell. We do not know why, but the arms of the squires of Haworth are impaled by those of Currer over the front door at Kildwick and, as at Heathcliff’s house in Emily Brontë’s
Wuthering Heights, one step then brought you into the family sitting room, an old-fashioned great hall.
Not many people could have been building grand country houses in 1642 as civil war loomed between Charles I and Parliament, but this is the year that John Coates completed Kildwick Hall in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Not for him the court fashions of Inigo Jones, the King’s architect. Kildwick is a house in the Elizabethan or even late-medieval mastermason tradition, all gables and stone mullion windows massively built of the local millstone grit with heavy stone flags on the roof.
For three centuries the house passed by inheritance until finally, becoming too large to live in, it was sold as an hotel. Now it is a private house again, immaculately refurbished with an attention to detail and a wealth of high-tech gadgetry and fine fittings, such as one might find on the most luxurious of yachts. It lies in Airedale, beyond Keighley and its mills on the way to Skipton. Moorland opens up behind the house and all around are lush green fields.
The road into the village crosses the River Aire and the handsomely restored Leeds to Liverpool canal with its brightly painted longboats, then winds up past a magnificent medieval church set in a churchyard filled with huge Pennine tomb slabs and table tombs. It stands at the top of a steep stretch of ancient-looking parkland scattered with trees. As squire you can walk down across it and enter the churchyard through your own lych gate.
Like many old houses, Kildwick stands close to a quiet country lane. The entrance gates, topped by a splendidly lithe pair of lions, are of William III era, as are the grand Baroque urns on either side. These were added by Henry Currer, who also built the imposing temple-like courthouse on one side, presumably after he married a rich widow after the death of his first wife in 1697. His tombstone relates that he was “a great proficient in the study of the law” but, allured by the charms of a private life, returned to the place of his birth where he chose to become a magistrate rather than to “improve his fortune” at the Bar in London.
The 1640 entrance front is gabled and almost symmetrical, but the entrance is set to the side as if the owner was not going to have windows where he did not want them and demanded the porch should open into the great hall in the traditional manner, not in the middle. The ground and first floors have impressively long runs of mullion windows while the second floor, pressed under the gables, has two ogee or flame-topped windows still medieval in feel.
Inside, the hall has a huge stone-arch fireplace large enough to park a Mini. The beautiful full-height panelling is original, although a Country Life photograph of 1911 shows that the carved herm figures on two of the walls are a later introduction. But the frieze with the Currer lions and the wolves of the Wilsons, who had inherited the house, are visible on one side.
In every room at Kildwick the stone of the mullion windows remains exposed on the inside and it does not take long to realise that the leads framing the glass are unusually slender: these are recent replacements superbly crafted in minimalist style yet traditional in pattern.
Today the centre of life is the kitchen at the back, which has another large-arch fireplace, dated 1673, and is equipped not only with an Aga but an in-built flame grill as well as the usual breakfast bar. This is not a place to burn the oil on the stove, as there are no doors between kitchen and dining room. Perhaps that is why there is a second, more traditional dining room opening off the entrance hall, far from any kitchen dramas.
The family dining room opens into a bar with a smart Art Deco theme and a very handsome door with modern marquetry attached to the older door behind. Beyond, the drawing room extends into a Victorian wing and has a handsome Italianate ceiling and deep maroon walls. An extreme neatness extends to every corner with even the remote controls set carefully in line on the carpet by the sofa.
The first floor is laid out on lavish lines with a large master bedroom suite of four rooms. There are steps up to the large bedroom, a spacious bathroom lined with mirrors and a walk-in dressing room where clothes and shoes are set in cupboards without doors, so that your entire wardrobe is visible at a glance.
The staircase, and there is only one, ascends in short flights in the Jacobean manner around a solid pier rather than an open well. The steps are stone and bare on the underside. The upper floor is a teenage realm where the ceilings have been opened to the eaves, revealing massive roof timbers and creating the opportunity for raised galleries in both bedrooms. In one a staircase leads up to a bunk bed behind a wooden balustrade. In the other a freestanding spiral stair rises to a workstation floating under the roof timbers.
The bathroom here is the smartest in the house, with a sculpted basin made of a single sheet of moulded glass that flattens out as a table top, and a transparent shower cabin with a door on 12in hinges that closes like that of a jetliner. The heater is a full-height ceramic panel against which you can toast yourself.
The house stands looking south across the valley, protected by the rising hillside to the north and sheltered by tall trees all around, including a magnificent monkey puzzle. Below the house is another more formal garden, with arched wooden pergolas on brick piers, which descends to a lower level with a greenhouse as elaborate as most modern conservatories.
The present owners have acquired the adjoining house, The Mullions, and also transformed the old courthouse into a spacious modern office. Old houses inevitably prompt concerns about repairs and maintenance costs, but at Kildwick the house is of such massive construction it looks set to last a thousand years.
Price: £3.5 million. Agent: Dacre, Son and Hartley 01943 600655
