Oakwood Hall

Oakwood Hall is a large mill owner’s house, now a hotel, constructed around 1864 by George Knowles and William Wilcox of Bradford. It was commissioned by Thomas Garnett, a local cloth merchant, and includes interior decoration designed by William Burges and stained glass by Morris & Co. to designs by Burne-Jones and possibly William Morris himself. A mid-20th century extension was added by R. A. Singleton.

The building is constructed from hammer-dressed stone with ashlar dressings and a Welsh blue-slate roof. It is a two-storey building with an attic, designed in a Gothic Revival style, forming an L-shaped entrance front with three gables and four bays. The windows are multi-light, mullioned, and transomed, with the exception of a French-looking oriel window in the first floor of the first bay. The second bay projects forward, featuring a Tudor-arched doorway and a large stair-window above. A gabled Gothic gas-lamp is positioned above the door, which may have been designed by Burges. The third bay has a four-light window on each floor, connecting to the gabled fourth bay. The roof has tall, steeply-pitched, coped gables, topped with stacks featuring diagonally-set flues to the left and right. The left-hand return has two gables, one showcasing a stepped, double-chamfered, mullioned window of local style. There is a stack of three diagonally-set flues on this range.

Inside, the stair-hall boasts an open-well staircase with Jacobean-style barley-sugar balusters, carved newels (the base newel surmounted by a decorative gas-lamp), and a stained glass window, considered among the finest early domestic works by Morris & Co.. The window’s lower zone is decorated with flower patterns within a diagonal grid of quarries, while the upper two zones feature a background of quarries with a floral motif and four panels. These panels depict female figures representing the Four Seasons (possibly by Morris) with St. George in the third panel (designed by Burne-Jones around 1865). Above these are four medallions of Chaucerian heroines – Dorigen, Griselda, Cresyde, and Constance – also designed by Burne-Jones. The only surviving design by William Burges is the dining room fireplace, executed by sculptor Thomas Nicholls, which includes a gabled overmantel, a castellated mantel-piece with incised crosses and fan tracery corbels, the initials “TG” on a shield, and a Lincoln Imp set against a background of columbine leaves. Burges also designed furniture for Oakwood Hall, representing his earliest comprehensive scheme of domestic design. The house is notable as one of the few domestic buildings, alongside Waltham Abbey, where the work of Burges and Morris can be seen together in a cohesive manner.