Oakwell Hall: 'We work to maintain manor house and gardens visited by Charlotte Bronte that has featured in Gentleman Jack and Wuthering Heights'
They’re perhaps more used to gardening gatherings than garden parties but today, members of the Birstall-based Friends of Oakwell Hall will be leaving their wellies at home to attend a royal event at Buckingham Palace.
Their attendance at the latest Royal Garden Party is in recognition of more than 30 years’ of volunteering to support the eponymous 16th century manor house and its gardens. Members undertake a wide range of indoor and outdoor activities at Oakwell Hall Country Park, including uprooting groves of the invasive Himalayan balsam, clearing paths, digging ponds, coppicing, organising tea stalls and acting as parking wardens on open days.
Oakwell Hall was built in 1583 and has a colourful history, being a manor house, school and latterly a museum. Writer Charlotte Bronte visited in the 19th Century and featured it as Fieldhead in her novel Shirley.
Perhaps the most bizarre episode in its history, however, came in the 1920s, when the hall was almost sold to relic-hunters in America, who planned to dismantle it stone-by-stone, transport it across the Atlantic and then rebuild it – the plot was thwarted by two local businessmen, who realised its cultural value and stepped in to buy the estate.
In more recent times, the Elizabethan manor house has been used as a backdrop for numerous film and TV productions, among them Gentleman Jack, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister, and Wuthering Heights.
The Friends of Oakwell Hall and Country Park was founded in 1988, inspired by a ‘gatepost conversation’ between one of its former rangers, Derek Crawley and some of the park’s regular walkers. One of their first big tasks was manually dredging the pond next to the hall, painstakingly digging out tons of mud and muck and occasionally finding the odd animal bone.
Presiding chair and founding member Roger Knights and the group’s membership secretary, Lesley Hudson, whose late husband Nigel was also a founder and former chairman, have been invited to today’s Royal Garden Party thanks to their joint winning of the Friends Group of the Year award from the British Association of Friends of Museums.
Lesley says: “It is a real honour that our small group is receiving recognition for the volunteering we do. The Friends of Oakwell Hall is made up of so many brilliant people. We work alongside the park’s rangers and staff and together we make a huge difference in terms of keeping Oakwell Hall looking as good as it does. We are always looking for new volunteers - there’s lots of opportunities, both indoors and outdoors - so if you don’t mind getting muddy or like to learn new skills and meet new people, our door is always open.”
Roger adds: “This is something we have all done, quietly and under the radar, for more than 30 years. It’s something we do because we’re passionate about the place and we work well together, including with the staff at Oakwell Hall. It really is a whole team effort.”