Smith House West and Smith House

A house in two occupations formerly known as Smith House, located on Smith House Lane in Lightcliffe, Brighouse. The building is dated 1672 but incorporates remains of an early 16th-century timber-framed house. It is constructed of hammer-dressed stone with ashlar dressings and a stone slate roof.

The plan follows a hall and cross-wings arrangement, with the hall rising to one and a half storeys and the two wings rising to two storeys. A further two-storey wing has been built out to the rear of the central area. The front elevation is three rooms wide, arranged in three bays, with a projecting two-storey gabled porch positioned at the junction of the second and third bays, forming a lobby entry.

The first bay contains double chamfered mullioned windows with hoodmoulds, each of six lights to both floors. A lantern finial surmounts the apex, beneath which is a blocked opening. The central hall bay features a double chamfered mullioned and transomed window of sixteen lights with a king-mullion. A three-course ashlar parapet rises above, topped by lantern finials. The window is surrounded by a hoodmould which continues around the porch. The porch itself has a semi-circular arched doorway with moulded imposts and surround. Above the doorway is an early twentieth-century cross-window that breaks into the hoodmould. A lantern finial crowns the porch apex.

The porch shelters a doorway with a cyma recta-moulded surround and a straight lintel with a step to its centre, above which the date is carved in relief. The third bay is gabled and features an early twentieth-century cruciform window of twelve lights on the ground floor, with two cross-windows on the first floor.

The return wall forms a long range with two gables and a two-span roof. A doorway sits beneath the junction of the roof and is flanked by a decorated lintel. A drip course continues over windows to both floors, which retain double chamfered mullioned windows of four and five lights. The rear elevation displays a broad central gable of early eighteenth-century date with three bays of cross-windows; the right-hand window is a tall staircase window. Quoins mark the angles. Attached to the right-hand end is a cross-wing with a double chamfered mullioned window of four lights to the first floor and an arched light (solid) to the gable, which bears a lantern finial.

Interior: The hall fireplace features an elaborately inlaid oak overmantel of late seventeenth-century date, flanked by fluted pilasters of early eighteenth-century work and a pulvinated frieze, probably dating from an eighteenth-century refitting of the hall range. A new staircase was installed at the rear at this time, and the door to the stair hall was given a wooden surround with a half-round head and fluted pilasters. The staircase has turned balusters, a swept handrail, and an open string set within a panelled hall.

The east wing originally contained two rooms: a parlour with its own external door and a north room serving as a kitchen. The kitchen features cyma-moulded spine beams with scarf joints that break on the line of an earlier firehood, which was replaced by the present large kitchen fireplace. This fireplace has a shallow arched lintel inscribed "1726 IHA" (Joseph and Ann Holmes), carried on corbelled jambs with a chamfered surround. The kitchen staircase, of late seventeenth-century date, has open fretwork on splat balusters, a moulded handrail, and a closed string, probably re-used.