All Work and No Play!

My work today took me to Oakwell Hall at Birstall.

The hall, built in 1583, recreates the period in the 1690s when it was home to the Batt family who were Royalists. Charlotte Bronte visited in the 1830's and featured it as "Fieldhead" in her Novel "Shirley".

" If Fieldhead had few other merits as a building, it might at least be termed picturesque: its irregular architecture, and the grey and mossy colouring communicated by time, gave it a just claim to this epithet. The old latticed windows, the stone porch, the walls, the roof, the chimney-stacks, were rich in crayon touches and sepia lights and shades. The trees behind were fine, bold, and spreading; the cedar on the lawn in front was grand, and the granite urns on the garden wall, the fretted arch of the gateway, were, for an artist, as the very desire of the eye. "

Charlotte Bronte; Shirley (1849)

The hall and outbuildings were busy today with school and corporate events.