Bankfield Museum

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Coordinates: 53°43′57″N 1°51′48″W / 53.73250°N 1.86333°W / 53.73250; -1.86333 (Bankfield Museum)
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Bankfield Museum
Halifax railway station
First West Yorkshire (buses)
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WebsiteBankfield Museum
Duke of Wellington's Regimental Museum

Bankfield Museum is a grade II

MP
, and its grand interior.

History

Painted ceiling above the grand staircase

When Edward Akroyd (1810–1887) bought this building in 1838, on his engagement to Elizabeth Fearby of York, it was a much smaller eight-roomed house, built c. 1800.[1] He and his brother Henry were working for their father Jonathan Akroyd, a rich worsted mill owner, and living at Woodside Mansion in Boothtown. Jonathan died in 1848, and it was possibly Edward's inheritance which paid for the development of Bankfield which began around this time. Edward encased the 18th-century building in fairfaced stone and added two loggias, a dining room, Anglican chapel and kitchens.[2]

By 1867 Akroyd was

All Souls’ Church, all designed by George Gilbert Scott.[4]

By 1887 the business was in decline and Akroyd was dying. He sold the building to Halifax Corporation for £6,000 and retired to St Leonards-on-Sea in East Sussex, where he died. The house was immediately turned into a museum and branch library, but over time the original features were neglected, and some elements were lost; however the building was listed grade II in 1954.[5] The building has now been restored as far as possible.[2] Calderdale Council has done this because "Together Akroydon and Bankfield symbolise the importance of the textile industry to Victorian Britain and the central role that Halifax played in this story."[4] Meanwhile 25,000 natural history specimens were transferred to Leeds City Museums in 1990 and the archaeology collections loaned to Kirklees Museums in 1979. A number of collections, in particular a large textile collection, were listed in 1999.[6]

Duke of Wellington's Regiment Museum

The museum was partly closed for phase one of a refurbishment in 2005, and was reopened on 22 October 2005 by Lady Jane Wellesley the daughter of the

Yorkshire Regiment on 6 June 2009, using accounts from serving soldiers and interactive displays.[7]

The regiment comprised the combined

Queens and Regimental colours, one which was an honorary stand awarded by the East India Company, so the combined regiment carried four colours on parade.[8]

Dukes Museum exit

The regiment's headquarters (now an area headquarters of the Yorkshire Regiment) and archives are at Wellesley Park in

MP he supported the establishment of the Regimental Depot in Halifax. The Bankfield Museum assists with research and educational activities in connection with this department.[9]

Early history section


"The Regiments’ Battle Honours range from the Battle of Dettingen (1743) to the Battle of the Hook, Korea (1953) and then to a Theatre Honour in the Iraq War (2003), together with many other unrecognised actions. Twenty one Battalions served during the First World War and during the Second World War men from twelve Battalions served as tank crews, artillery men and engineers in addition to their traditional role as infantryman. Since 1945, the Dukes have served with United Nations Forces in several operations, in addition to their tours of duty in Northern Ireland."[9]


Description

Exterior

Exterior of the morning room, now the Akroyd gallery

The wide eaves and fairfaced stone give the building an Italianate appearance. The pillared and enclosed entrance lobby was originally an open

porte-cochere, or covered entrance-way for carriages, which would drive under the stone canopy for the passengers to disembark.[2]

The forecourt has a bowed screen wall. The stone mansion has an irregular shape due to various extensions. It consists of two arcaded storeys above a basement, especially in the 1867 wing. There are great eaves below a hipped and slated roof, and it is generally designed in the style of 14th to 15th century Italy. The basement is rusticated. From the back the low belvedere tower which lights the back staircase is visible. The arcaded loggias, originally open to the air, are now enclosed and altered.[5]

Interior

Grand staircase

The grand staircase is

royal coat of arms. The Regimental Museum occupies the original drawing room suite. Below the library was the billiard room, accessible from the bottom of the staircase, through the red door on the right. The 1867 block has warm air grilles in the skirting boards, and the heating was probably provided by a boiler. However, there is a legend that hot air was ducted from the Haley Mill nearby. On the floors of the marble gallery and the chapel lobby are encaustic tiles by Maw & Co. of Staffordshire.[2]

The saloon

Marble putto on fire surround in saloon

This is now the entrance hall and shop, and the walls are used to display temporary exhibitions. The

putti holding trumpets. Putti are also the central feature on the grand staircase ceiling – possibly a wistful element as Akroyd and his wife had no children.[2]

The library

This is now the World of Textiles gallery, with the exhibits in the original oak bookcases. It was a very light room, the north and east walls having three great windows on each, and fittings for three chandeliers on the ceiling. The windows have etched glass semicircular panels at the top, in designs reflecting the stylised patterns on the ceiling.[2] In one of the bookcases is a display of silverwork by Halifax jeweller Charles Horner (1837–1896).[10]

Ceiling
Painted fauns on library ceiling

The library was originally also the

Tennyson, all admired by the Romantics. All the spaces on the cream background are filled with illustrations imitating the original maiolica style, featuring stylised goats and fauns, cornucopia, grapes, birds and flowers, but also angels and putti in the centre. The decoration around the edge has a Green Man.[2]

Fireplace
Inlaid design on fire surround

The fireplace is red

Niccolò Bazzanti (1802–1869)). The bust of Elizabeth is remarkable in that it has the trompe-l'œil effect of a veil over the face. The glazed hearth tiles are similar to Mintons tiles but are probably locally made.[2]

Back staircase

Stairwell in belvedere tower, with chandelier

On the wall of the stairwell are low relief plaster sculptures of Night and Day after works by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. They symbolically divide the night quarters upstairs from the day quarters downstairs. The oak balustrade has turned balusters and brass finials in the shape of lions, because Elizabeth's family coat of arms featured lions. The ceiling is heavily coffered, but there are windows round the top of the stairwell and a great glass chandelier, so it is very light – in fact the stairwell is built as a separate tower so as to permit so many windows.[2]

People associated with the museum

The Halifax Literary and Philosophical Society was started by 13 Halifax merchants, professionals and military officers in 1830 for research and study, to promote science and the arts and to start a museum to display their collections. These collections of curios were acquired from their Grand Tours and travels for business and military purposes; they were objects of geology, natural history, anthropology, the arts, as well as oddities from around the world. Their museum was at first successful but by 1895 had declined, so was closed and the exhibits given to Halifax museums. Some of Bankfield's share has survived and a few items are exhibited to demonstrate Victorian antiquarian taste.[11]

Japanese armour, 19th century

Lemuel Clayton was a

Higashi Honganji temple at Kyoto. It was not appropriate for him to take home one of these stone babies which were images intended to bring luck to childless women, but Clayton convinced the jūshoku to allow him to have one, after insisting that he was not a missionary. So in 1887 yet another image of a baby was added to the number already in Bankfield House's decorations while the childless Elizabeth Akroyd was still alive and her husband had died the same year.[11][12]

Emile Clement (1844–1928) donated or sold some of his Western Australian aboriginal material to the museum, but this collection was later given to Manchester Museum.

Henry Ling Roth was an anthropologist and curator of the Halifax museums between 1900 and 1925. He published numerous items on anthropology, including 23 numbers of Bankfield Museum notes. He was "The man who developed a small, confused, unattractive museum into an important centre of spectacular interest and research".[13] The museum had followed the 18th century pattern of displaying curiosities, but Roth classified and rearranged the displays for educational purposes about peoples of the world and of the past. His main interest was textiles, so he displayed textile machinery from Calderdale and "an old spinning jenny in use at Dobcross until 1916". He acquired and displayed spinning wheels, looms and textiles from the southern and eastern continents. He was commended for this in 1916.[11]

Costume display

Edith Durham was an anthropologist and collector of Balkan textiles who donated her collection to the museum in 1935. It is thought that the museum possibly acquired this important collection as Bankfield still carried the reputation given to it by Ling Roth, or perhaps because Roth's successor from 1925 to 1932 as curator was George Carline, brother of Edith Durham's friend Hilda Carline. The Durham collection was displayed at Bankfield in the "Bread and Salt in our Hearts" exhibition in 1997.[14]

Events

The museum hosts a series of temporary exhibitions; for example in 2009 there was an exhibition of Chinese-inspired textiles. There are regular events, including talks for the public, and workshops and drop-in activities for children,[15] plus Key Stages 2 and 3 education programmes.[16]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Seymour, Anita; Calderdale Council Town Planning and Leisure Services depts (n.d.). Akroydon Heritage Trail. Halifax: Calderdale Council. p. 17.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Calderdale Council Leisure Services Dept. Bankfield Mansion: a brief history (free leaflet).
  3. ^ "Halifax Town Hall opening 1863". The Holdsworths. Retrieved 11 July 2009.
  4. ^ a b Calderdale Council. Bankfield Museum Halifax (free leaflet).
  5. ^ a b Historic England. "Bankfield Museum (Grade II) (1211183)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 11 July 2009.
  6. ^ "Museums Libraries Archives Council Cornucopia". Bankfield Museum: overview of collections. 1999. Archived from the original on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 11 July 2009.
  7. ^ "Bankfield Museum". AboutBritain.com. Retrieved 11 July 2009.
  8. ^ "Regimental colours". Duke of Wellington's Regiment Regimental Association. Retrieved 2 June 2018.
  9. ^ a b "Duke of Wellington's Regiment Museum". Calderdale Council. Archived from the original on 24 July 2009. Retrieved 11 July 2009.
  10. ^ "Bankfield Museum, Halifax". Charles Horner of Halifax. Archived from the original on 24 November 2009. Retrieved 11 July 2009.
  11. ^ a b c Museum labels, Bankfield. Retrieved 12 July 2009.
  12. ^ Unknown (20 February 1886). "Mr Clayton's Tour Round the World: City of the Mikados". Halifax Courier.
  13. ^ "Unknown". Halifax Courier and Guardian. 16 May 1925.
  14. ISBN 9781571817440
    . Retrieved 12 July 2009.
  15. ^ "Calderdale Council". Bankfield Museum: Events. Archived from the original on 3 November 2010. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
  16. ^ "Bankfield Museum". My Learning. Archived from the original on 26 June 2013. Retrieved 11 July 2009.

External links

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