Rookes Hall With Attached Building Warehouse

Rookes Hall is a house dating to the mid-17th century, with an attached warehouse built in the mid-18th century. The house is constructed of hammer-dressed stone with ashlar dressings, and has a stone slate roof. It is a double-pile building, meaning that it has two rows of rooms running the depth of the structure.

The roof has a coped gable with kneelers, and gable stacks at the right-hand end. The front of the house has three bays and quoins, with a string course running along its facade. The left-hand bay features a two-storey porch that shelters the entry to a through passage. The porch has an outer door with moulded jambs and a shaped lintel, flanked by miniature columns and a sundial dated 1638. The porch is topped with a solid parapet and finials. The inner door to the passage has a broad-chamfered surround. The windows are double chamfered mullioned, though they have largely lost their transoms and mullions; only the king mullions remain, with most being renewed. The window in the porch was originally of six lights. The second bay includes a cross-window/fire-window now solid, above an unusual four-light oriel with canted sides, and the remnants of a large 20-light hall window, above a 12-light mullioned and transomed window. The third bay has an 16-light mullioned and transomed window to the parlour, with a 12-light mullioned and transomed window above. A cross-window with a hoodmould and projecting rainwater head sits between the second and third bays at first floor level. The right-hand return wall shows evidence of a cross-window now solid, and other altered two-light mullioned windows. The rear of the house, which is double-pile, has quoins and double chamfered mullioned windows of four and six lights to the ground floor, with one window of several lights now reduced by an inserted door - but still retaining a hoodmould. To the first floor are two 12-light mullioned and transomed windows and a two-light window between, with most mullions and transoms removed. A rear doorway of the through passage has a large square-headed lintel and composite jambs, with a taking-in door above, which is partly solid and partly a window. A small two-light window survives from an earlier service room with a raised roof, within the large warehouse, which was connected to textile manufacture. There are four stacks in total.

Internally, the through passage has heavily joisted ceilings, with 7-inch by 4½-inch stop-chamfered beams at the east end, backing onto the passage. A fireplace with moulded jambs, elaborate stops, a shallow arched lintel, and a carved leaf pattern in the stone surround is also present. The parlour contains a fireplace with a shallow arched lintel, carved spandrels with shields, and moulded jambs.

The building is considered to be the remains of a fine structure, though it has been severely altered. The building is referenced in G. Hepworth's “Brighouse, its scenery and antiquities” (1885) and D. Nortcliffe's “Buildings of Brighouse” (1978).