Postcard - Mono (Document ID: 100309)
Two views of Somerset House, Halifax, West Yorkshire.
Author: H.P. Kendall
Date: not dated
Location: Halifax
Format: Postcard - Mono
Document ID: 100309
Library ID: 35499817
Picture 1 is of the exterior as it was before extensive rebuilding in that particular part of Halifax. Picture 2 is of the interior plaster work above a fireplace, supposedly depicting Mrs John Royd as Britannia. Examples of the plasterwork are preserved at Bankfield Museum.
Somerset House, also known as Royds House, is sited between Rawson St and George St in Halifax town centre. It is a vast 17 bay house and warehouse designed by John Carr of York in the 1760s, for John Royd, a textile merchant. In the 1800s, the building was used as a bank by the Rawson family and later the Huddersfield & Halifax Union Banking Company. Between 1850 and 1857, rooms above the bank were used as a post office. The house was curtailed and renamed Somerset House in the late 19th century. The first floor saloon still retains the decorative plasterwork by the Italian Rococo artist, Giuseppe Cortese, supposedly of John Royd, his wife and family.
The house is a Grade II* listed building and, following restoration and the removal of a parade of shops on Rawson Street, which had obscured the view, it was reopened in 2008. Somerset House was used particularly for civil ceremonies and celebratory events after this time but is no longer a venue for civil ceremonies.
The photographer, Hugh Percy Kendall, was a founder member of the Halifax Antiquarian Society in 1900 and a frequent contributor to their transactions. He was also a former president of the Halifax Photographic Society. He died in 1937 at the age of 62.
