ALL is not as it seems at Shibden Hall.

Behind the thick stone walls and heavy oak panelling lies a warren of hidden doorways and passages linking various corners of the 15th century manor house.

In the 1800s the underground passageways would’ve been a hive of activity, with servants scuttling about, neither seen nor heard.

The tunnels were installed by lady of the manor Anne Lister, who didn’t want her staff visible as they moved about the house.

Shibden Hall was home to the Listers, a wealthy cloth merchant family, for three centuries from 1615, but dates back to 1420 when it was owned by sheep farmers.

In the early 1600s the estate was owned by the Savile and Waterhouse families, then the Listers, and the crests of all three families are ingrained in a stone-mullioned window.

Anne took over the estate in 1826, aged 34. An intrepid traveller, she made extensive renovations to the house, inspired by designs she encountered overseas.

To say Anne kept a diary would be an under-statement. Her journal, which inspired a TV drama starring Maxine Peake, was kept in code and records in painstaking detail not just her own life but local and national events too.

She even compiled a daily weather report. Some days are recorded in more than 2,000 words and the 27 volumes contain four million words in total.

Anne died while travelling in Russia and her friend, Ann Walker, inherited the hall but later died in an asylum. The house returned to the Lister family who donated it to Halifax Corporation in the 1930s.

Anne Lister’s legacy remains in striking features of the property. She commissioned an architect and landscape gardener to work on the house and grounds, which are beautifully laid out with rock gardens, a cascade designed to resemble as Scottish waterfall, and a ‘Paisley Shawl’ terrace. A gothic tower was added as a library.

The Tudor half-timbered frontage is the house’s most distinctive feature. Inside is a collection of furniture from past centuries, including a huge oak table in the housebody, built there, flat-pack style, in the 1590s, which has stood in the same place for more than 400 years.

Among the displays is a photograph of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth during a visit to the hall, and a painting of Anne Lister. When a guide told us it was recently cleaned after a bird found its way inside and relieved itself on her portrait, I had to smile, and I imagine her downtrodden subterranean servants would’ve done so too.

We climbed the ornate ‘Jacobethan’-style staircase, installed by Anne in the 1830s, and wandered along the gallery to the bedrooms. The rather spooky nursery has a rocking horse that looks like it might just move on its own.

Outside, at the rear of the house, is the Shibden Hall Folk Museum, a cluster of barns reflecting bygone crafts and local life.

A carriage collection includes the Lister Chaise, one of the world’s oldest surviving carriages, and a delightful Romany caravan. We peered inside an estate worker’s cottage, a blacksmith’s forge, an old brewery, and a bar room re-creating a Halifax inn where Luddites met in the early 1800s to plot their mill attacks.

A slab of stone in the courtyard was part of Halifax’s original gibbet.

The hall is set in Shibden Park, which has woodland walks, a boating lake, pitch and putt and a miniature railway. More recent attractions, following a £3.9million restoration, include a spacious play area and striking visitor centre and cafe.