| Description | Group record for Kirklees Park – for information regarding specific individual buildings/archaeological located within the park please see their relevant PRN.
• Castle Earthwork and Roman watchtower (PRNs 12 and 8761)
• Kirklees Priory site and gatehouse (PRNs 2881 and 3687)
• Kirklees Mill (PRN 2882)
• Home Farm buildings (PRNs 6892, 9348, 9349, 11516, 11517, 11518, 11519, 11520, 11521, 11522)
• Nun’s Grave (PRN 9350)
• Robin Hood’s Grave (PRN 2885)
• Fishponds and weirs, Nunbrook (PRN 2884)
• Iron bridge (PRN 4676)
• Kirklees Hall (PRN 9334)
On 27/06/2013 English Heritage added Kirklees Park to the Register of Parks and Gardens; during their initial assessment English Heritage made two site visits during March 2013 in order to produce a consultation report part of this is summarised below:
Kirklees Priory was surrendered to the Crown in 1539. In 1544 it was granted to John Tasburgh and Nicholas Savile, but in 1565 a relative of Savile's, Robert Pilkington who lived at Kirklees, conveyed the whole manor to the merchant and clothier John Armitage, in whose family (later spelt Armytage) the estate remained until its sale in 2013.
The hall was originally at the site of the priory, later becoming known as Lower Hall, and more recently as part of Home Farm. Home Farm includes a number of late medieval buildings thought to have been originally part of the priory. Between about 1580 and 1640, the Armitage family spent around £10,000 expanding their landholdings and building a new hall, being elevated to the baronetcy in 1641. The new hall, the current Kirklees Hall (Listed grade I), may have been expanded from an earlier stone built mansion built for either Tasburgh or Savile, as the earliest portions of the current building appear to date to the mid C16. Although some of the early surviving buildings at Home Farm were at least partially residential, none appear to be of sufficient status to have been the original hall.
The wider landholdings of the Armitages were extensively worked for coal and other minerals, probably providing the funds for a range of redevelopments that took place at Kirklees in the second half of the C18. In 1757, the landscape gardener, Francis Richardson, produced a 'Survey of the Park and Gardens of Kirklees' along with a plan of proposed improvements and alterations entitled 'General Plan…'. The survey shows a series of formal gardens and closes clustered around Kirklees Hall, with the rest of the park divided into fields. To the south east there is a very small structure marked at the intersection of two straight drives through a small tree plantation. This structure may be Robin Hood's Grave (Listed grade II). The survey also appears to depict the Castle Hill earthwork. The plan of proposals shows a general sweeping away of the closes around the Hall and of field boundaries within the wider park; the construction of a series of serpentine ponds down Nun Brook; the re routing of roads and the creation of a series of meandering paths through Nun Bank Wood. The plan also proposes a large walled garden to the west of the Hall as well as a structure within the centre of Castle Hill. |