Town in West Yorkshire, England
Keighley
Say it "Keeth-lee": a Yorkshire mill town where a volunteer-run steam railway starred in The Railway Children.
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Key information
- County
- West Yorkshire
- Nation
- England
- Known for
- Worsted mills, the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway, Cliffe Castle and Timothy Taylor's Landlord
- Famous people
- Sir Bracewell Smith, Patrick Brontë, Andrew Carnegie, Jenny Agutter
About Keighley
Why the locals say "Keeth-lee"
Visitors who say "Kay-lee" or "Keye-lee" get gently corrected. The name is pronounced KEETH-lee, and nobody has ever been able to make it more logical. Keighley sits where the River Worth meets the Aire, at the foot of the moors that stretch towards Haworth and Oxenhope. It was a market town long before the factories arrived, serving farmers and hand-loom weavers working in the surrounding hills. Then the Industrial Revolution turned the valley into a place of chimneys.
The town that made the machines as well as the cloth
Keighley grew rich on worsted, the smooth, hard-wearing wool cloth that Yorkshire did so well. Mills lined the Aire and the Worth, drawing on fast-flowing water and, later, steam. What set Keighley apart was that it also built the kit. Local engineering firms made textile machinery, looms and machine tools, and sent them around the world. The town's wealth came from both ends of the process: making cloth and making the machines that made cloth. That money shaped the place. Terraces climbed the hillsides, chapels went up, and the mill-owning families built themselves houses to match.
A castle built on wool money
The grandest of those houses is Cliffe Castle, a mansion of turrets and battlements that began as Cliffe Hall, built for Christopher Netherwood between 1828 and 1833. Henry Isaac Butterfield, of the textile-making Butterfield family, enlarged and remodelled it extensively in the late 19th century. It looks like something from a fairy tale, set in a hillside park above the town. In the 20th century it was bought by Sir Bracewell Smith, a Keighley man who became Lord Mayor of London and chairman of Arsenal. He gave it to his home town, and it now houses a museum with gardens and parkland around it. The town's public library has its own distinguished story: it was funded by the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie and opened in 1904. The Brontë family, meanwhile, knew Keighley well. Patrick Brontë and his children used the town's Mechanics' Institute library, a long walk from Haworth parsonage.
The railway that was saved by volunteers
Keighley's best-known export is probably a film location. The Keighley & Worth Valley Railway climbs from the town up to Oxenhope, a branch line of just under five miles stopping at Ingrow, Damems, Oakworth, Haworth and Oxenhope. British Rail closed it in 1962. A group of enthusiasts refused to let it die, and in 1968 volunteers reopened it as a heritage railway. They run it still. Oakworth station, all gleaming paint and hanging baskets, was the setting for the 1970 film of The Railway Children, including Bobbie's reunion with her father. Jenny Agutter's red-petticoat train-stopping scene was filmed beside the line near Mytholmes Tunnel rather than at the station. Fans arrive from all over the world to see the locations. Damems, with its single platform and tiny station building, has a charm of its own, and is among the smallest stations in the country.
Landlord, curry and a Cougars roar
Timothy Taylor's brewery has been in Keighley since 1858, moving from Cook Lane to its Knowle Spring site in 1863. Its Landlord, a pale, hoppy bitter, has won CAMRA's Champion Beer of Britain title several times, and pubs across the country put it on the bar. The town's food scene is also shaped by its large South Asian communities, whose families have come to work and settle here since the mid-20th century. Curry houses, bakeries and sweet shops are an everyday part of Keighley life. On the sporting side, rugby league is the game. Keighley Cougars have been playing since 1876, making them one of the older clubs in the sport, and the town has a strong rugby league following that includes plenty of amateur and junior sides.