AA Breakdown Cover
Loyalty benefits
5-star car insurance
Enjoy 5-star-rated insurance and access to offers from AA Rewards, which saved our members more than £4.5m in 2010. What's more, many new customers pay £250 or less to insure their car with the AA.
Get a quoteRetrieve a quote
Savings
Whatever you want from your savings, whether you want to set a little something aside for a rainy day or you're planning for the future, we can help you make the most of your savings.
More information
Ski holidays
Severe weather
An opportunity to visit one of West Yorkshire's finest 'Halifax' houses.
Distance 4 miles (6.4km)
Minimum time 2hrs
Ascent/gradient 426ft (120m)
Level of difficulty Easy
Paths Field paths and canal tow path, 8 stiles
Landscape Arable landscape and canalside
Suggested map aqua3 OS Explorer 297 Lower Wharfedale
Start/finish SE 099420
Dog friendliness Good on walk, but not permitted in Hall
Parking Lay-bys in East Morton
Public toilets East Morton
Write a review of this walk
1 Walk uphill, past the Busfeild Arms (this is the correct spelling!), for 150yds (138m). As the road descends, take cobbled Little Lane, to your right. Walk past houses to a gate; it gives access to a walled path descending to a road. Go right and immediately left, down Hawthorne Way. When this cul-de-sac ends, at a house, take a stile ahead onto a field path. Follow a wall until it bears to the right, then keep straight ahead, down to a stile at the bottom of the field. A path descends, between fences, to a stile in a wall. Turn left when you reach the road, cross the Leeds and Liverpool Canal on a swing bridge, and go right, along the canal tow path. Pass beneath a stone bridge. When you get to another swing bridge, leave the canal, and walk left, down the road. Cross the B6265 at the traffic lights, to enter the grounds of East Riddlesden Hall.
2 Having investigated the hall, retrace your steps to the canal and cross it on the swing bridge. Take the road (Hospital Road) immediately on the right, in front of the Marquis of Granby pub. This road ends at the gateposts of what was once a hospital. Take a path just to the left of them, onto a path between a wall and a fence. After 200yds (183m), when the path turns slightly to the right, look for a gap stile in the wall to your left. Walk uphill to another stile at the top-right corner of this long field. A grassy farm track continues uphill, bearing right to pass a farm and row of cottages in West Morton.
3 The track soon forks. Go left, still uphill, on a walled track which soon meets a road. Walk right, down the road for 200yds (183m). Where the road bends right, around a cricket pitch, take a gate on the left to follow a field path by a wall. Though the footpath itself is indistinct, continue in the same direction over stiles and two more fields to meet a walled path, which soon approaches Moorlands Farm. Join the farm's access track and walk down to a road. Go right here, past some cottages and back into East Morton.
Now hidden away in the suburbs of Keighley, East Riddlesden Hall is one of West Yorkshire's architectural gems. This gaunt, gritstone manor house was built in the 1640s by James Murgatroyd, a wealthy yeoman clothier from Halifax. It was built on the site of an even older hall, but of this earlier building only the central hall remains. Above the battlements of the hall's bothy, James Murgatroyd had two heads carved in stone - a bewigged Charles I and his queen - with the legend 'Vive le Roy' (long live the king). James and his family were staunch royalists during the Civil War, in a time and place when it was unwise to advertise such allegiance. Many royalists were forced to forfeit their land, an indignity from which the Murgatroyds were spared. But the family's loyalties did bring trouble elsewhere. Another of Murgatroyd's houses, The Hollins at Warley near Halifax, was being used to store Royalist arms when it was attacked by Parliamentary troops. Despite a fierce battle in which the defenders even tore off the roof slates to throw at their assailants, the house was taken along with 44 prisoners. James and his family must have escaped, or at least were released, and by 1648 East Riddlesden Hall was completed.
Though surrounded by houses today, East Riddlesden Hall used to be a farm. The huge tithe barn is one of the finest examples in the North of England, and a watermill once stood by the nearby River Aire. The fishpond at the front of the house may have been made by monks from Bolton Abbey. During the 18th and 19th centuries it was let by tenant farmers. This accounts for the fact that the hall has stayed substantially unaltered, retaining many of its original features. The most recent change of ownership left the hall in the stewardship of the National Trust.
The rose windows, over the entrance porches at the front and back of the hall, are typical of the 'Halifax' houses in the South Pennines. With its oak-panelled rooms and mullioned windows, the hall provides a sympathetic setting for collections of domestic utensils and Yorkshire oak furniture dating from the 17th and 18th centuries. In the great barn, 130ft (40m) long, are displays of farm carts and tools and the walled gardens, at the back of the hall, are being restored.
As well as visiting the National Trust's East Riddlesden Hall, which forms the theme for this walk, take a little time to explore the neighbouring mill town of Keighley (say 'Keith-lee'). There are still some fine Victorian buildings intact which give an indication of the wealth the textile industry brought with it. There is also an excellent indoor market.
The Busfeild Arms (named after a prominent local family), at the start of the walk in East Morton, offers good food, if eccentric spelling. The Marquis of Granby, just over the canal from East Riddlesden Hall, offers refreshments at the half-way point.
East Riddlesden Hall is blessed with a cast of ghostly characters. The most famous is the Grey Lady, the wife of a previous lord of the manor, seen wandering from room to room.
Driving school
Up to half price sale – from £99pp
