Building Name

Briarcourt, Occupation Road, Lindley, Huddersfield.

Date
1894 - 1895
Street
Occupation Road
District/Town
Lindley, Huddersfield
County/Country
Yorkshire, England
Architect
Client
Herbert Higginson Sykes
Work
New Build
Listed
Grade II

Commissioned from John Sykes as a wedding present for his son Herbert Higginson Sykes and his new wife Annie Eliza Thompson. The house is part of the revival of a local Yorkshire style of Jacobean manor. Imposing externally with its fine porch, deep bay windows and multiple gables, it is most notable for its interiors where Wood used many contemporary Arts and Crafts features to the historical style. Particularly striking are the main oak staircase; the decorated plaster ceilings; the inglenook fireplace in the dining room with a plaster frieze above; and the important frieze in the morning room painted by Wood’s friend F W Jackson. An important feature is the range of fitted furniture: cupboards, dressers and desks. The house was sensitively extended on the west side in 1904 by a local architect, and on the east side in 1906 by adding an extra floor.

John Archer describes the design of Briarcourt as, "typical of a detached, double fronted Victorian house". The building's character, says Archer, "indicates Edgar Wood's early favour for the Jacobean manner and the vernacular revival which was fashionable at the time." In constructing the house Wood made use of traditional local materials. The house is built of roughly coursed rubble stone walls with courses diminishing to the eaves. It has a stone slate roof with courses diminishing to the ridge, and within stone mullions he set lead light windows. Although Wood based the design of Briarcourt on that of traditional West Riding Halls, Briarcourt has a much loftier appearance. Archer ascribes this to the fact that Victorian tastes called for rooms with high ceilings.

Built for his brother-in-law, Herbert Higginson Sykes, Briarcourt was Wood’s first commission in the Huddersfield area. It is located on an open site with a slight fall to the east and skirted by Occupation Road to the south. During 1904 the house was extended by a local architect and not by Wood as may have expected. This presumably occurred because the extension was too small to be a worthwhile project for him or that he was too busy with his experimental work using reinforced concrete.