Moor Park

Moor Park is a country house built in 1859 by architects Andrews and Delauney for James Bray, an iron and brass founder from Leeds. The house is constructed from coursed squared gritstone and ashlar with a graduated grey slate roof.

The building displays a flamboyant classical-Jacobean style with two storeys and five by four bays, featuring a recessed bay to the right facing east. A central three-storey tower dominates the composition, its entrance marked by eight-panel double doors with fanlight flanked by paired Ionic columns supporting an entablature carrying an openwork balustrade. Above this sits an oriel window and three round-arched lights to each side at the top storey. The central bay is ornamented with relief mouldings of strapwork, vermiculated ashlar and Classical motifs, with a bracketed cornice and openwork balustrade. Bays two and four feature round-arched windows, whilst the outer bays have mullion and transom windows of four lights within two-storey canted bays to the left. The roof line is decorated with Dutch-style gables. Three fluted chimney stacks rise from the rear of the ridge at bays one and five, and an ornate octagonal cupola with round-arched openings and ogee roof rises to the right. The left return facing south has two-storey canted bay windows to bays one and three; bay four is flanked by attached octagonal shafts and, like bay one, has a Dutch gable.

The interior contains a small entrance lobby opening into a fine staircase hall with polychrome floor tiles. The massive cantilevered staircase of two straight flights with gallery features Jacobean-style arcaded balusters, whilst the hall ceiling is coved and decorated with strapwork plaster panels. The ceiling is glazed with glass painted in yellow and black. The ground-floor south and east rooms feature massive four- and six-panel doors in doorcases decorated with Classical motifs and strapwork. A fine stone fireplace in the south room is decorated with a lion crest and angels and has a marble mantelshelf. Ceilings retain remains of deep moulded cornices and main rooms have wooden architraves to the windows. The tower is lined with pine boarding and has turned balusters. First-floor and attic rooms also retain original ceiling cornices, fireplaces and cupboarding. The main rooms were divided by partitions at the time of survey.

James Bray purchased the Moor Park estate of 227 acres in 1848 and completed the house at a cost of £8,000. Bray had obtained the contract for building the Leeds and Thirsk (1849) and the Wharfedale Railways. In 1869 the estate was sold to Joseph Nussey MP, a Leeds woollen manufacturer, and in 1882 it was bought by Dr and Mrs Williams. The house remained with the Williams family until around 1950. The central tower with round-headed windows and balustrades are in the style of the campanile at Osborne House, Queen Victoria's marine residence on the Isle of Wight, completed in 1850, which was a great influence on the villas and country houses of the period. The house was unoccupied at the time of survey.