OF all the museums and galleries in the Bradford district, Keighley’s Cliffe Castle is the one that perhaps most defies categorisation.

Part manor house, part natural history museum, part art gallery – with local history, a two-headed sheep and a Chewbacca action figure thrown in – the museum is amongst the quirkiest in Yorkshire.

Grade II listed Cliffe Castle is one of four museums run by Bradford Council.

But while the other museums are dedicated to specific subjects – industry, history and art – Cliffe Castle is an eclectic mixture.

Built in the 1820s as Cliffe Hall, the building was eventually home to industrialist Henry Isaac Butterfield – who had the building transformed into the more recognisable Cliffe Castle in the 1880s after inheriting the property.

He made his fortune from cloth manufacturing in Keighley, and in 1854 married Mary Roosevelt Burke, an American heiress and part of the presidential Roosevelt family.

When you first enter Cliffe Castle, the museum very much seems a product of this family wealth with elaborate chandeliers and huge family portraits.

Other striking items include a conical pendulum clock that was purchased at the 1878 Paris world fair and a Malachite fireplace that was once part of a Russian exhibit at the Crystal Palace.

But move to other parts of the museum and Cliffe Castle completely changes.

A gallery shines a light on the town’s working classes and the industries that dominated the Aire Valley in the past, including weaving and masonry.

Elsewhere in the museum there are fossils dating back millions of years, and archaeological items including the Silsden Hoard – a collection of Iron Age gold coins.

One section of the museum contains the third most extensive geological collection in the country, with over 1,000 items, while another displays stained glass windows recovered from local churches.

In the Sir Bracewell Smith Hall, there is the Stanbury Urn – a Bronze Age burial urn containing the cremated remains of a man, a battle axe and articles of clothing, earrings and clasps.

And although not an art gallery, Cliffe Castle has a huge collection of paintings.

One gallery features an Egyptian mummy and Sarcophagus, and others house temporary exhibitions.

The museum also has its own working beehive.

Heather Millard, a curator at Cliffe Castle Museum, says: "It is certainly a place where it pays to take your time and wander to take it all in."