When first built the handsome gazebo in the grounds of Crow Nest in Dewsbury would have had views over the estate’s fine gardens and pleasure grounds. At the end of the 19th century Crow Nest was bought for the people of Dewsbury, and has now been a public park for 130 years. The Temple remains an ornament to the park, but sadly today it has a rather forlorn appearance.

Information about the Crow Nest estate is quite hard to find (and it shouldn’t be confused with Crow Nest at Lightcliffe, which is not far away). We know that in 1733 it was purchased from the Bedford family by Samuel Burroughs (c.1695-1761), a Master in Chancery and author of important texts on the legal system. Upon his death in 1761 the house passed to his recently widowed daughter, Sarah, who arranged for Crow Nest to be let the following year. The ‘exceedingly pleasant house’ was described as ‘fit for a Gentleman’s family’ and came with gardens, orchards and pasture. There is no mention of the temple, although two maps show it was extant at that date.

The first visual evidence for the gazebo is on a plan of the River Calder surveyed by the engineer John Smeaton in 1757 (the house is mistakenly named as ‘Crows Mount’). The gazebo can be seen in a corner of the walled grounds, and traces of these walls can still be seen attached to the temple today. A map dated to c.1766 shows the gazebo and mansion in more detail.

In 1785 Crow Nest was sold to Richard Milnes, but in 1798 he was declared bankrupt, and the estate was once more offered for sale. The ‘Most Valuable and Truly Desirable Estate’ was described as ‘situate upon an eminence, commanding a most extensive view’. It was bought by the Hague family who remodelled the mansion and remained there for almost a century until they sold the estate to Dewsbury Corporation, who wished to create a public park for the townsfolk. The park opened in 1893 with a day of ‘holiday and public rejoicing’.

The town plan of Dewsbury produced by the Ordnance Survey office in 1852 shows the Temple at the end of a long straight path which was terminated at the other end by a summerhouse. At that date it had two adjoining walls, one of which was  connected to an arch, seen in this photograph. Although ‘old castellated arches of Norman design’ were mentioned in 1889, they had disappeared by the time the 25″ map was published in 1894 and the Temple was by then a free standing structure.

The building is not named on the 1850s 6″ Ordnance Survey map, but is called ‘The Temple’ on the 25″ map surveyed in the late 1880s (but not published until 1894). By the time a revised edition of the map was published in 1907, Crow Nest Park had been created with lake and island, bowling green and, of course, a bandstand. The designer, William Cox, incorporated the Temple into the layout of the park, surrounding it with ornamental shrubberies. From the upstairs room of the gazebo there was a panorama of the whole park and the countryside beyond.

A lovely watercolour in the collection of Kirklees Museums calls the building the ‘Observatory’, but it is likely that the term was used in the sense of a belvedere or gazebo, a building from which the view could be admired, rather than as an astronomical tower. Locally the story is told that a tunnel leads from the mansion to the Temple, and that one of the owners of the estate used it to to escape from his bad-tempered wife – a tale attached to more than one folly.

In the early 20th century a group of retired Dewsbury men known as ‘the Veterans’ Parliament’ used the Temple as a shelter in which to meet. Judging by their age the men had probably served in the wars in South Africa, and the park houses a memorial to the friends they lost which was unveiled by Baden-Powell in 1906. By 1937 the men were in their seventies and finding the stairs in the building a challenge. Bemoaning the lack of facilities to ‘mash a pot of tea’ they left for alternative accommodation.

Soon after that date Britain was at war again, and the maintenance of ornamental buildings was not a priority. At date unknown the elegant roof was removed, and it became a rather grand store for park equipment. Described by Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘quite elegant’, the Temple was listed at grade II in 1985, but is bricked-up and sadly neglected today.

In 1894 a committee was formed to establish a museum in the mansion, and it was a popular attraction for over a century. Sadly the Dewsbury Museum was closed in 2016 after the council withdrew funding as part of a programme of austerity measures. A long campaign to keep the building in community use was unsuccessful, and the house (grade II) currently stands empty. Crow Nest Park is listed at grade II on the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in England.

The Temple delighted the families who made Crow Nest their home for a century and a half, and has been an attractive feature for the visitors to a public park for another 130 years and counting. It is sad to see it neglected today.

Thanks to Katina Bill of Kirklees Museums for her help with this post.

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Above the village of Longwood, just outside Huddersfield, there stands what can only be described as a strange stump of a building. This is the  Longwood Tower, built by local men without formal design or architect, in time for the intriguingly-named Longwood Thump of 1861.

The Thump was the name given to the local holiday celebration, and the name is peculiar to Longwood. Nearby Kirkheaton had its annual Rant, and Almondbury a Rush, whilst Honley was a little more transparent with its Feast. At each games were played, picnics were eaten, and the ale flowed. In 1861, when the Longwood Tower (also known as the Nab End Tower) was built, there was considerable hardship in the area with many men out of work ‘during the manufacturing distress’. The unemployed men used their time to build ‘the conspicuous tower’ with the permission of the landowner, William Shaw of Botham Hall, and using stone from the adjacent quarry.

‘A Novel Erection’, ran the headline in the local paper, the Huddersfield Examiner, in August 1861. From the start the building was considered a ‘curious affair’, with its great mass of dry stones, but it formed the centrepiece of the Thump with feasting and fireworks lasting several days. The rustic date stone of 1861 is accompanied by the initials G.H. for George Hellawell, a stonemason who lived in the village and supervised the building. George Collier of Milnsbridge wrote lines to celebrate the opening:

On Longwood Edge there stands a Tower,
that end near Quarmby Clough,
and if you stand out by the church,
you’ll see it plain enough.
This Tower was built by men and boys
of Longwood, that is true,
and if you want the height of it
it’s twenty-nine feet two.
So come my lads and lasses gay,
come, and join the throng,
we’ll have a spree this Longwood Thump
in eighteen sixty-one.

The tower provided a backdrop to cricket matches between local teams, including the Lumb Challenge Cup of 1889 where ‘the mighty Armitage Bridge crumbled to small pieces, and fell a ruined wreck in sight of the mythical structure of Longwood Tower’. The Athletic News reporter joked that the victors, Cliffe End, had the edge because the ‘Bridgers’ were unused to the altitude of the ground and were exhausted by the walk up the steep slope.

In 1895 the Shaw family gave the tower and the surrounding land to the people of Huddersfield as a recreation ground. Three years later they paid for the already deteriorating tower (throwing the loose stones down the hill was apparently a favourite pastime) to be consolidated, but payment was accompanied with the proviso that it was then the sole responsibility of the town council.

The Longwood Thump had always involved music, and as well as Brass Bands there were choral performances, called ‘sings’. Longwood’s pioneering role in the development of this local tradition, led to their annual event becoming known as ‘the Mother of all Sings’. A hollow just below the tower was developed as an outdoor concert hall, although crowds overflowed across the whole hilltop: crowds were estimated at 5,000 at the 1893 event when Handel’s Messiah was among the works performed.

At a time when fundraising for the National Health Service has been very much in the news, thanks to the efforts of Captain Sir Tom Moore and others, it is worth remembering the days when there was no free healthcare, and charity was often the only hope. The Longwood Sing of 1869 was in aid of Samuel Shaw, an elderly music-lover who was sick. In 1896 the Sing raised funds for the Huddersfield Infirmary, and the organisers expressed a hope that surrounding districts would follow their lead. As the programme above illustrates, the sings have continued to raise funds for good causes.

It’s doubtful if the builders of 1861 expected their tower to be standing more than 150 years later, or thought that a British Prime Minister would one day climb up to their tower for the annual Sing, as Huddersfield-born Harold Wilson did in 1973*. In 2008 the Longwood Tower was restored by Kirklees Council at a cost of £200,000. Bullen Conservation inserted specialist anchors, or ties, to hold the building together and prevent collapse. It remains a popular spot, and long may the singing continue.

* Technically a former and future Prime Minster: Wilson had been PM 1964-70, and would return to office the year after his visit, serving as PM in 1974-76.

In 1920 the Yorkshire Post published a letter about a mysterious cave, or grotto, at West Nab on moorland above Meltham on the western edge of Yorkshire. The correspondent believed the structure had been built around 1500 years earlier as the dwelling of the pagan god Baal – hence it’s being known as ‘Bellman’s Castle’.
The building’s true history is more prosaic. In around 1750 R.H. Beaumont of nearby Whitley Beaumont built a banqueting house for the use of he and his friends when they were shooting on the moor. It featured a huge stone slab of a table around which 20 could dine. Beaumont’s Castle had perhaps been misheard or misinterpreted as ‘Bellman Castle’ by the time the 1st edition ordnance survey map was published in 1854.

It was however imbued with romance and fantasy from the very start. In 1751 a visitor was confident it ‘resembles ye Habitations of the Druids in ye Scotch Islands’.

This 1920 photograph shows it was already in poor condition by that date.

Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown drew up a plan for the landscape at Whitley Beaumont which was implemented by Richard Beaumont in the 1780s. The Monument was probably built as an eye-catcher from a new carriage drive, and existed by 1822 when it is shown on an estate map, but not named. It is marked as ‘The Monument’ on the 1850s Ordnance Survey map but no-one remembers why it was given this name, or what it might be a monument to.

Built of fragments of masonry, probably rescued from a remodelling of the hall, and embellished with battered statuary, this is a fabulous folly and was surely designed by the family themselves. It’s unlikely an eminent architect would wish to take the credit.

The monument fell into disrepair during the two world wars when the park was used for army training and mined for coal as part of the war effort. Today the fragments survive as a forlorn and overgrown pile of stones.

The park at Whitley Beaumont is strictly private.

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