Ponds and fountains planned for old park

10:00am Tuesday 1st January 2013 in Keighley

An artist’s impression of the cafe terrace An artist’s impression of the cafe terrace

Details of the planned £3.3m facelift for Cliffe Castle Park have been revealed.

Measures are designed to return the park to its Victorian heyday when it was a mill owner's private paradise, with fountains, pathways, terraces, vegetation and entrances being restored and the cafe and greenhouses being replaced.

The hope is that the work will be funded through an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund's Parks For People Programme.

Bradford Council passed “stage one” of the bid on November 28 and has submitted its final, stage two application.

Among the major elements of the facelift are:

  • Providing a new entrance and gates and restoring the historic Keighley Road entrance
  • Creating a new ornamental pond and restoring two historic fountains
  • Recreating planting, opening up the original views across the park
  • Restoring the formal terraces, pathways and stairs and replacing the urns
  • lmproving the bandstand to create a bigger performance space with two stage levels
  • Building a new cafe, meeting room, and houses for guinea pigs, rabbits and birds
  • Building a new glasshouse structure including a Palm House

The council said its proposals aimed to restore and enhance the key historic features, views, structures and planting of Cliffe Castle Park.

They would also provide an “accessible, vibrant, well-designed and maintained” park to allow local people to learn about its rich heritage value.

The council’s design team has been working for several months on draft proposals and has consulted Cliffe Castle Park Conservation Group and other local people.

Bradford Council is also looking for funding from other sources to replace the park's playground.

Plans for the project were revealed in the Keighley News in 2009, when readers were asked to draw up a “wish list” of improvements.

The aim was to follow the successful £4m lottery-funded restoration of Lister Park in Bradford.

Cliffe Castle Park was created by mill owner Henry Isaac Butterfield in the 1870s.

Comments(4)

Uther Pendragon says...
7:06pm Wed 2 Jan 13

First job fence the whole park, replace all the gates, strict dawn to dusk only entry. Security patrols 24/7 with police backup. If these measures are not in place the scumbag youth and drunks and druggies of Keighley will destroy it before you can build it.No entry from the local school will also cut down on vandalism.Anyone caught destroying/damageing
/stealing etc should be given long community sentences working in the park.Just me wishfull thinking, it will never happen!

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cronk stanley says...
9:42pm Wed 2 Jan 13

Well Uther I am inclined to agree, I also remember Devonshire Park in the 50s, It was a lovely park, loads of flower beds, and a magnificent display of tulips in springtime. Well tendered grass areas, and good pathways.

This was an era just after the war, parks were well loved and respected, bands played in summer,people enjoyed being there, all gone now.

Scumbag youths, brought up with no respect for anything, or anyone, least of all themselves would as you say destroy it.

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Graham Forsyth says...
6:23am Thu 3 Jan 13

Devonshire park was still a beautiful place in the early sixties with tennis courts, bowls, and a pitch and put golf course, along with the drinking fountain, paddling pool, fenced off duck pond, two large shelters with seating, and two toilets. That was in the time when we had full time `Parkies` looking after them, and when it was possible to clip a troublesome youth around the ear without fear of prosecution.

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samuels david says...
3:43pm Thu 3 Jan 13

Uther Pendragon; cronk stanley; Graham Forsyth.

The era that you talk about, as you are aware, the post war period, is an era long gone.

The scumbag youths you talk about, brought up by parents who indoctrinated these unwanted, themselves had no respect for anything, or anyone, least of all themselves.

Simply put, in my view, Iit was these people who I believe destroyed what could have been.
cronk stanley, dreams enjoyed by a past population were destroyed by the growth of moral criminality within the ruling political class and its obsession of making laws that suited the political establishment and the Church.

When as a youth of fifteen, I could, and did, hitchhike to London and then the world by myself with relatively safety, yet walking through Keighley late at night these days is something I just wouldn’t contemplate.

Look around you, and take notice that due to the erosion of public concern for each other, raising awareness of any issue is taken as being of wearisome persistence, that should be denied when logic and deafening silence tells all that something is not right.

Until respect becomes indistinguishable from truth, then the scumbags who govern, will allow themselves and their children to litter the countryside, not only with polystyrene detritus, but deny it is happening, as what little intelligence they may have had, has been superseded by near criminal arrogance.

A Happy New Year to all and I hope that you all continue to seek the truth,

David Samuels

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