Black Dick’s Temple, Whitley Beaumont, West Yorkshire

Many follies have lurid tales attached telling of wicked acts and/or ghostly goings-on and a classical temple, high on the Whitley Beaumont estate near Kirkheaton, doesn’t disappoint. It is known locally as Black Dick’s Temple, after Whitley Beaumont’s owner in the early seventeenth century, Sir Richard Beaumont. Local legends tell that Sir Richard ran up such huge debts gambling that he had to live a double-life as a highwayman. He is said to haunt the site and, of course, there are whispers of a network of secret tunnels under the building.

Sir Richard (1574-1631), 1st and only baronet, or Black Dick if that’s the version you prefer, built a new mansion at Whitley Beaumont which remained in the family until the early twentieth century. Sir Richard is commemorated with a magnificent monument in St John’s, Kirkheaton.

… also shown here, with an appreciative visitor, in a lovely watercolour sketch by Huddersfield artist Peace Sykes.

The tales of Sir Richard and his dissolute lifestyle may or may not be true, but he never knew the Palladian temple. It was built in the middle of the eighteenth century, as a landscape ornament and banqueting house, for a later Richard Beaumont (1719/20-1764). The architect was possibly James Paine (1717-1789), who was married to Richard’s sister Charlotte, and who worked on the house at Whitley Beaumont in the 1750s. It was extant by 1760 when a visitor admired the grand Terrace Walk which led to the ‘Temple’. A domed banqueting room, once decorated with ornate plasterwork, stands above a basement that probably housed a kitchen for the servants (although it is sometimes said to be an ice-house).

The next generation of Beaumonts remodelled the park south of the house to a design by Capability Brown. By the middle of the twentieth century, this part of the park had been exploited for its coal reserves, but the terrace and temple north of the house remained largely unchanged, although greatly neglected. The Beaumonts had sold up in the 1920s, having auctioned the mansion’s fixtures and fittings in 1917.

The estate was once more offered for sale in 1950, when it was auctioned in lots. The auctioneers didn’t even consider that a private owner might make the ‘impressive mansion’ their home, and although ‘renovation as an institution’ was a proposed use, it seemed to be taken for granted that it was ‘eligible for demolition’. Lot 2 was ‘The Avenue’ which included that ‘local landmark known as The Temple’.

As predicted, the house was indeed pulled down soon after the sale in 1950, and the materials sold. Local boy Brian Tattersfield began to visit Whitley Beaumont just as demolition started, and explored every corner of the estate. In his own words it became a ‘lifelong obsession’. Whenever a busy career (as one half of the acclaimed design studio Minale Tattersfield) allowed, he returned to his early Box Brownie photo’s and sketches, and created finished pen and ink drawings. Although the dome of the Temple was gone when he first visited, he always preserved the building’s dignity and showed it intact.

Today the temple is a ruin. Vandals and thieves have long-since stripped the lead from the roof (where was the terrifying ghost of Black Dick when he was needed?), and the internal floor is long gone, leaving a gaping hole inside the building. The soot-blackened shell remains a local landmark and can be seen from nearby public footpaths.

Thanks to Katina Bill, Senior Curator, Kirklees Museums and Galleries and Brian Tattersfield for their invaluable help with this post.

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