West Scholes Hall, West Scholes, Queensbury
£499,950
Dacre, Son & Hartley, Saltaire
Telephone 01274 581794

For the 50 years the current owners have lived in historic West Scholes Hall it’s been filled with children and pets, family and friends, comings and goings and busy family life.

“It now needs a new lovely family to fill it with fun and laughter, so I will move on, happy.”

Dating back to around 1694 the house is made up of what was a farmhouse, brewery and a dairy.

Today the accommodation which is over two floors and accessed by two staircases has a sitting room, library, dining kitchen and dining room, utility, and a workshop in what was the dairy.

The first floor has four bedrooms, bathroom, shower room and en suite.

It has been an amazing experience for the owners to live in a house that has been a home for more than 300 years. “To think of the times in has seen. Civil War, World Wars, changes in fashion and the way people live, the coming of the railway, cars, electricity and telephones.

“I often wonder about the people who have lived here and what changes they have seen.”

Over the years the house has attracted a lot of interest including some researchers from Cambridge University concluded that the house would originally been a single storey dwelling which was substantially altered some time later with a second storey and a front porch with a date of 1640 carved into the stone above the porch.”

The house has many interesting historical aspects. The windows in the dairy, still bear the white lettering showing they were exempt from window tax, and there is a ‘secret’ passage running above the main entrance hall, which was used for ripening cheeses and this passage and the dairy room both contain the original stone shelves.

When the owners first moved in, part of the house had been divided off and let out to another family, so when they moved on some years later the house was gradually bought back to being one dwelling.

“When we prepared to knock through to make a doorway into what is now our kitchen, we came across the original doorway which has just been bricked up, complete with the original door, still on its hinges.

“We carried out various improvements and the house is now warm and comfortable.

“My favourite room, is the kitchen, which I love, with its Aga and views across the valley.

“A house is a place where people share their lives and everyone should gather to eat together, talk and even argue! Our kitchen is where people gravitate and I have many happy memories here.

“I also love the bedroom with the four poster bed. My husband made the four poster and the cradle and I made the bed-hangings. It’s furnished with things we have enjoyed collecting and some family pieces. I just love it.

Wrapping around the house is the garden with a driveway to the front with a woodland garden to the side, while to the rear is a paved patio, lawn and borders.

“I just love being in the cottage style garden, which looks its best from spring until around August. It’s a sociable space with various patio areas and lawns to the front and back.

“My abiding memory of my time here is that is has been a happy place to live out the days of normal everyday life.”

If you would like to be the next custodian of West Scholes Hall, like William and Isabel Hirst who were yeoman farmers who are believed to have had the house built or the Briggs family who ran the brewery in the 1800s then this could be your chance to own a slice of history.

MORE FROM PROPERTY OF THE WEEK