Walterclough Hall
Walterclough Hall, also known as Water Clough Hall or Upper Walterclough, sits in the Walterclough Valley, south‑east of Halifax and north‑east of Southowram, beside the Red Beck.
The hall was built by the Hemingway family and first recorded there in 1379, remaining with them until 1654. In that year it was bought by William Walker, who later moved to Lower Crows Nest. The initials of his second son, Abraham Walker, and his wife Anne Langley are carved on the building.
Their son Richard Walker inherited the hall, and after he drowned in a canal, his son John Walker inherited it. John Walker, a mid‑18th‑century squire and woollen merchant, and his wife Ruth Nodder had four children—Richard, John, Grace and Mary—and also adopted their nephew Jack Sharp, along with caring for several aunts and uncles.
John Walker’s youngest son John took no part in the business, so when his elder son Richard died and John retired, Jack Sharp was left in possession of the hall and the business. In 1771, after John senior died, his surviving son John junior told Sharp to quit. Sharp arrived from York with his new wife to find the estate heavily mortgaged, most contents removed, and only two rooms still furnished.
In 1778 Sharp built Law House on nearby Law Hill using the proceeds of his misdeeds. Miss Patchett later opened a Ladies Academy at Law House, and Emily Brontë taught there for six months in 1837–38, a period believed to have inspired her novel Wuthering Heights.
In 1867 the Walker estate at Crows Nest was auctioned, but what happened to Walterclough Hall at that time is not clear. By 1870 the hall had become a girls’ boarding academy, run by Elizabeth Ann Gregory with her sister Emma and their live‑in brother Charles. The 1871 and 1881 censuses show many young women from the area living there, plus a few local children.
The academy’s fortunes declined, and it closed after a few years. In 1888 Walterclough Pit, the area’s largest coal pit, opened nearby, and 1889 saw the death of Charles Gregory; these may have contributed to the end of the school.
Emma Gregory lived at the hall alone by 1891, then the sisters lived nearby in Halifax. Emma died in 1909 and Elizabeth in 1920. By 1913 the hall was largely unoccupied and dilapidated. During World War II, a German bomb shattered its windows. By the late 1960s and early 1970s only the façade and a few rooms behind it remained, and these were demolished in the late 1970s.
An oil painting of the kitchen interior, showing a carved stone column supporting a roof joist and a spring-fed stone trough, was exhibited in the Smith Art Gallery in Brighouse in the 1970s.
Today the site of the former Walterclough Hall is Walterclough Hall Farm on Walterclough Lane in Halifax, at coordinates 53°42′57″N 1°49′16″W.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 15:01 (CET).