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Shibden Hall

Introduction

Shibden Estate is one of West Yorkshire's most important heritage sites.

The medieval, timber framed Shibden Hall was a family home for over 600 years; Shibden Park, a public park since 1926, is a green oasis of beautifully restored grounds less than a mile from Halifax in West Yorkshire.

For over 300 hundred years Shibden Hall was the home of the Lister family, but the house itself is even older, first built in about 1420. Many generations of people and their families have lived and worked here, and all have left their mark on its history.

Shibden’s owners were people with whom we can identify today:

• on moving into the house they changed the decorations as personal taste and fashion demanded.
• they added to the building and they took things away.
• they did not freeze their home at a certain date, but were happy to place furnishings they liked and examples of new technology alongside the things they inherited.

The Hall today reflects this continual development:

• the house is an accumulation of objects of many dates, providing evidence of how people lived throughout Shibden’s time as a family home.
• the rooms and displays are set out as if someone has just slipped out for a moment, and may return just after you have moved on.

For information about the restoration work being carried out in the grounds of Shibden Hall, see Shibden Park restoration project .

See also loans, donations and bequests .

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