A host of new artefacts are now on display at Keighley’s Cliffe Castle Museum, which is reopening its doors following a year-long refurbishment.

Among the new items unveiled next Saturday are an ancient burial urn discovered in Stanbury, a sea turtle served to distinguished guests at one of Keighley’s first Mayoral functions and a portrait of Queen Victoria.

Cliffe Castle was built by Keighley industrialist Henry Butterfield in the 1870s, and for years stood as one of the district’s most grand homes. In the 1950s Sir Bracewell Smith bought the house and turned it into a building and art gallery for the people of Keighley.

It adopted many of the exhibits from its predecessor, Keighley Museum. Owned and run by Bradford Council, the building shut last April for a major refurbishment including a complete electrical re-wiring.

During this work, grand chandeliers and stained glass windows were cleaned and restored, walls were re-painted to their original colours and 3,000 sheets of 23 half carat gold leaf were used to return the inside to how it would have looked in the Victorian era.

Paintings that hung in its grand rooms have been returned thanks to Dr Richard and Lady Rozelle Raynes, descendents of the Butterfields. One – of Queen Victoria – hasn’t been in the house since it became a museum in the 1950s. It was found by a museum worker in an antique shop in Nottingham.

The project cost £370,000, but many of the new items were donated to the museum.

The museum has retained its unique charm, while some rooms recreate the house’s past, others are packed with artefacts of Keighley’s history, while yet more rooms contain Egyptian statues, a bee hive and natural history exhibits.

Joining the museum’s famously quirky exhibits, which include a two headed sheep and Bloss, the earliest surviving specimen of an Airedale Terrier, is a sea turtle that was served as a meal at a mayoral ceremony in 1882 before being stuffed.

There is also a Stanbury Urn - a 4,000 year-old urn discovered buried at a Stanbury farm in 2007. The Bronze Age artefact contained human remains and a battle axe and has never been on display to the public.

Daru Rook, museum manager, said: “Keighley has been fiercely proud of its museums. For a small town it is astonishing it has such a large museum.”

Kirsty Giskin, assistant curator, said: “There are new displays and lots of things that that have never been seen in the museum before. It is exciting for us to be finally opening again and to allow people in to see these collections again.”

The museum will soon be complemented by a £4.5 million project to restore the building’s surrounding parks and gardens to their Victorian splendour.