The Lost Houses exhibition is going up one last time before all the paintings are collected by their new owners. It will be on display At Cliffe Castle in Keighley from February 11th until April 23rd 2017. I’m going to be in the museum all day on February 11th and April 1st to […]
On Monday August 1st (not long now!) my ‘Lost Houses of the South Pennines’ exhibition will come to Hebden Bridge Town Hall. Come and have a look at these large, colourful paintings of the regions lost houses, and find out about their rise and fall. High Sunderland Demolished by Calderdale council in 1951, High Sunderland […]
I’ve been quiet for a few months. I’ve not been lazy; I’ve been working on something… In January, after two years of work, I opened my ‘Lost Houses of the South Pennines’ Exhibition at Bankfield Museum in Halifax. We all dressed up (and I mean some of us really dressed up!), drank champagne, danced and […]
As so many of my paintings do, this picture started out with a trip to the park… In Holden Park, at the heart of Oakworth village, used to stand a vast Italianate mansion built of Yorkshire stone. It was the creation of Isaac Holden. A remarkable house for a remarkable man. Prints of this painting […]
I love this house, and I love this story. This house is where the idea for the whole project came from. I completed the paintings first (there are two – there’s even a third, half finished), but have only just got around to writing up everything I learned. I apologise: It’s a long one… Prints […]
Of all the lost houses, Littlemoor has seemed the most illusive. It was these two photos that captured my imagination: Littlemoor, or Littlemore Castle as it became known locally, stood in Queensbury for only 45 years. It was built in 1891 for Herbert Anderton Foster, the grandson of John Foster, founder of Queensbury’s famous Black […]
As a family, we love to visit Manor Heath so I’ve chosen this house for entirely selfish reasons! For me, Manor Heath is always sunny. Even when it’s cold, it’s bright. And the cafe sells nice coffee so I can keep my hands warm whilst manning the swings. I think it was this year, in […]
This is only a brief post. Someone emailed me this wonderful, detailed photo of the gateway of High Sunderland: It was the final piece of the puzzle and I was able to finish this painting today. This is the gateway described by Lockwood in Wuthering Heights: “Before passing the threshold I paused to admire a […]
From one extreme to another, High Sunderland is one of the older houses I’m looking at for this project. The house was either completed 1587, for Richard Sunderland, or 1629, for Abraham Sunderland, his grandson. It’s not known for sure, though there are records show a structure on the site dating right back to 1274, […]
I spent an afternoon up at the Pennine heritage archive about a week ago, looking through the auction catalogues for Castle Carr from 1874 and 1879. It was so strange looking at the descriptions of it as a potential stately residence. The plans show the planting schemes, and the potential for tennis courts, croquet […]
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