THERE are two things I remember most about visits to Cliffe Castle as a child.

One is a beehive in a glass viewing panel, where you can watch thousands of bees going about their business close-up, and the other is an assortment of stuffed wild animals, some of them frozen in time killing prey.

On a recent visit I was pleased to find both displays still in tact at the Keighley museum, which has reopened following a refurbishment.

As well as new exhibitions, and rearranged period reception rooms boasting sparkling, restored chandeliers, the museum has retained its traditional attractions.

Standing on hillside grounds, with a children’s play area, Cliffe Castle is a striking neo-Gothic building housing a series of galleries dedicated to the heritage of Keighley and surrounding areas, and the house itself.

It was originally the home of Victorian textile millionaire Henry Isaac Butterfield and among the new displays is Dining with the Butterfields, providing a glimpse into how the family wined and dined their guests. Sir Henry added towers and conservatories to the early 19th century building and decorated it with the griffin motif, which he adopted as a crest. Local benefactor Sir Bracewell Smith purchased the building in 1950 and had it redesigned as a museum and art gallery. As a former family home it’s impressive, even by opulent Victorian standards. Opposite the large reception room, bearing life-size portraits of Napoleon, and the Great Drawing Room with its ornate painted plaster ceiling, is a gothic revival vestibule with a huge pendulum clock and a sweeping staircase flanked by grand marble pillars.

In the Working Landscapes gallery there’s equipment reflecting local crafts and trades of the past, including agricultural tools, coal-mining equipment, an old map of bell pits on Baildon Moor and a Victorian handloom in a recreation of Timmy Feather’s workshop. Timmy, the area’s last reported handloom weaver, died in 1910, aged 85.

Fascinating photographs of old Keighley reveal houses crammed along medieval lanes at the top of High Street, and displays in the Archaelogical gallery include the Silsden Hoard, 27 Iron Age gold coins discovered by Jeff Walbank in 1998.

The Airedale galley traces the birth of the River Aire, showing fossils of its earliest creatures and a model of a pholiderpeton, a huge prehistoric amphibian. A striking embroidered timeline by artist Naomi Parker depicts the journey of creatures evolving from the sea. The Natural History gallery, once the Butterfields’ ballroom, is home to mounted birds and mammals beneath a barrel-vaulted ceiling. Highlights include a platypus, a golden eagle, a goshawk swooping on a rabbit, and a family of tawny owls, with the mother feeding its chicks a mouse. Beautifully displayed, if a little gory, it presents nature in its rawest form captured by the taxidermist’s craft.

The Egyptians gallery is as eerie as it is beautiful, with ancient artefacts including a 3,000-year-old black coffin made from ancient sycamore fig and a mummy of an Egyptian girl.

The Keighley Stories gallery has an assortment of charming old toys, including a railway set and a splendid Edwardian dolls house, with a tank in the attic allowing taps to be turned on and the bath to be filled with water! While such items romanticise childhood of the past, the stark reality of life for many children was spending half a day at school and the other half in the mill. Reading about a Keighley mill over looker who hit boys with a strap with nails on sent a chill down my spine.

I was, however, amused by the “wife taming cradle”. The adult-sized wooden rocking cradle was loaned out by Keighley Hen Pecked Husbands Club to “soothe” nagging wives. I’d like to think there was a similar structure for long-suffering wives to stick their errant husbands in.Among the new displays is a series of costumes, from the Victorian period to the 1950s, set against hand-painted murals. They include a white lace 1880s dress, worn in the Butterfields’ ballroom in its hey day, and a 1923 flapper girl dress.

After a walk through the grounds we had a cheese toastie in the cafe, which sadly has since closed, then called by the animal house to see the rabbits, who blinked at us through sleepy eyes, and Guinea pigs. Cliffe Castle remains an intriguing place to visit.

Factfile

Cliffe Castle Museum is at Spring Gardens Lane, Keighley

Opening times are Tuesday to Friday 10am-4pm and Saturday and Sunday 11am-4pm

Entrance is free

For more information, call (01535) 618231 or visit bradfordmuseums.org