page_title: Spring Hall
section_title: Interior
hierarchical_section_title: Spring Hall / Structural history / Interior
caption_attribution_description: Interior of Spring Hall, now known as Spring Hall Mansions, off Huddersfield Road, Halifax, West Yorkshire. Showing music room ceiling and the end wall with carved oak fireplace and matching doors either side. The doors would be convenient for actor's entrances if the room were also used for plays. The floor is all the same level with no stage, however the roof beam could support curtains. This mansion was a rebuild of a 17th century house, and designed in 1871 by William Swinden Barber for Tom Holdsworth. It is owned by Kirklees Council and it houses Calderdale Register Office. Note: Most of the interior of the building is not accessible to the public. Each interior image by this uploader was taken with kind permission of Council staff.
context_page_description: Spring Hall, also known as Spring Hall Mansions, is a mansion situated off the Huddersfield Road, Halifax, West Yorkshire. A house had been built on the site by 1614, but it was demolished in 1870 leaving only the cellars. It was rebuilt in Gothic Revival style and completed in 1871 to a larger ground plan by architects James Mallinson and William Swinden Barber for Tom Holdsworth.
  In World War I, the house served as a hospital. It remained in the family's ownership until the death of Holdsworth's nephew in 1920. Subsequently, it became a boarding house, and passed through several hands until it was presented to Halifax Corporation in 1948. After most of the grounds had been sold off, the remainder was used for sports and recreation, the building was later used as a ballet studio. The building fell into disrepair but was renovated in 2009. As of 2014, Calderdale Register Office has officiated at wedding ceremonies in the Hall's ground floor suite since 2011, and the upper floors are now rented out as office space.
context_section_description: Inside the building, only the porch and entrance hall are accessible to the public, during office hours. Although as of 2014 much of the interior has been adapted for office use and for the Calderdale Register Office, the grand Arts and Crafts wooden staircase has survived intact, along with some wall and ceiling decoration. The lower part of the staircase is visible from the entrance hall.
  The dark-varnished and galleried staircase retains faded gilding and stencilled motifs on its first floor ceiling and on the underside of the first landing, visible from the ground floor. The decorative, carved frieze around these ceilings also still has old and faded gilding. The newel post is of unusual design. There are four carved wood and plaster corbels supporting the first floor staircase ceiling. They represent a woman with grapes and flowers, a winged cherub, a man with harvest motifs and a full-bearded man in medieval costume, carrying scrolls. In the latter corbel which overlooks the stairwell, the bearded man's profile is similar to Barber's profile in his portrait by David Wilkie Wynfield, and his scrolls are long and slim enough to be building plans. These details beg the question as to whether it is a portrait of the architect, placed to overlook his work. The plaster corbels on the ground floor staircase ceiling are carved with lions, in connection with the Holdsworth family crest.
  Two original first-floor fireplaces survive. One of these has an over-painted stone surround and mantelpiece, and a hearth surfaced with Arts and Crafts tiles. The other one in the music room is a large and decoratively carved oak affair, with matching doorways either side. These doors open into a dressing room, allowing the fireplace to be a backdrop for performances. The doors and fireplace contain half-columns and pediments in a semi-neoclassical style, with a carved frieze of fruit and leaves, and the helmeted head of St Cecilia, patroness of musicians. The hearth contains a hand-made Arts and Crafts cast iron hood and moulded, coloured ceramic tiles on the surround. The hearth's floor tiles have been removed. The music room has a carved, oak dado, and a decorative plaster ceiling with ceiling roses which double as ventilators, and there are the original wooden beams designed to support the heavy hung ceiling.
  On the ground floor, a decorative plaster ceiling with layered and coloured cornice survives in the wedding room of the register office. That room, like several others, has a large window set back into an arch, as viewed from the interior. Another ground floor room also has a deep, decorative plaster cornice, but no decoration on the ceiling.
  In the cellar is the boiler room which was originally one of the kitchens, having the remains of a fireplace and of a Belfast sink. At least two of the rooms at this level, including the present boiler room, are the remaining cellars of the original 17th-century house. They are part of the old foundations, having arched ceilings and supporting walls. At least one other cellar room has a 19th-century flat ceiling made of wooden joists and laths, showing that the room is part of Barber's 1871 extension.
caption: Music room
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