Description

SE14SW BINGLEY LADY LANE
SE111404 (west side)

2/100 Oakwood Hall
6.11.73
II

Large mill owner's house, now hotel. c1864 by George Knowles
and William Wilcox (Bradford) internal decoration to designs of
William Burges and stained glass by Morris & Co. to designs of
Burne-Jones and possibly Morris himself for Thomas Garnett (a
local cloth merchant); mid C20 extension by R. A. Singleton.
Hammer-dressed stone, ashlar dressings, Welsh blue-slate roof.
2 storeys with attic. Gothic Revival style. L-shaped entrance
front with 3 gables and 4 bays. All are multi-light mullioned-
and-transomed windows except that to 1st floor of 1st bay which
has a French-looking oriel. 2nd bay breaks forward and has doorway
with Tudor arch and above, large stair-window. Over door is gabled
Gothic gas-lamp, possibly to a design of Burges. 3rd bay has 4-light
window to each floor and forms link to gabled 4th bay. Tall steeply-
pitched coped gables. Stacks with diagonally-set flues to left and
right. Left-hand return has 2 gables, one with 2-over-4 light stepped
double-chamfered mullioned window in the local style. Stack of 3
diagonally-set flues to this range.

Interior: stair-hall has open-well staircase with Jacobean style
barley-sugar balusters; carved newels, that to base surmounted by
decorative gas-lamp. The stair is lit by a stained glass window
of high quality. The lower zone of the window is decorated with
flower patterns set in a diagonal grid of quarries. The upper 2
zones have a background of quarries with a floral motif. Against
the quarries are 4 panels, 3 of female figures representing the
Four Seasons (possibly by Morris) with St. George in the 3rd panel
from a design by Burne-Jones made shortly before 1865. Set above
are 4 medallions of Chaucerian heroines again designed by Burne-Jones:
Dorigen, Griselda, Cresyde and Constance. This window is thought to
contain some of the finest early domestic stained glass by Morris and Co.
that has yet been discovered (N. Taylor and A. Symond). The only real
survivor of the designs made by William Burges is the dining room fireplace
executed by the sculptor Thomas Nicholls. It has a gabled overmantel
and a castellated mantel-piece with incised crosses, flanked by tourelle
brackets on fan tracery corbels. In the centre are the initials "TG"
on a shield. Against the gable is a version of the Lincoln Imp set
against a background of columbine leaves. Burges also designed furniture
for oakwood which is the earliest of his comprehensive schemes of
domestic design that is known (C. H. Read, quoted in Taylor and Symonds).
Oakwood is of importance as it is the only domestic house, apart from
Waltham Abbey, where the work of Burges and Morris can be seen side by
side blending perfectly.

N. Taylor and A. Symonds, "Burges and Morris at Bingley: A Discovery",
Architectural Review, July 1968. The original drawings of Burges for
Oakwood are in the RIBA Drawings Collection.

Listing NGR: SE1112740398

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Oakwood Hall at Wikipedia
• Wikidata Q7074308

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

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  Historic Environment Law: Planning, Listed Buildings, Monuments, Conservation Areas and Objects, Supplement 2014
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  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)