Towneley Hall Art Gallery And Museum

Towneley Hall stands in the Borough of Burnley, Lancashire, on land the Towneley family owned for more than six centuries. The present building began as a courtyard house around 1400, then grew through several rebuilds in 1620, 1725 and 1817. Parts of the walls still date from 1380, making it one of England’s oldest continuously inhabited houses. In 1901 the last male heir sold the hall and its 62 acres to the town for £17,600. By 1903 it had opened as a public museum and art gallery, with a dedicated gallery added in the north wing in 1908. The hall is recognised as a Grade I listed building, the highest heritage protection in the country. Its interiors show how successive generations enlarged and altered the house to suit changing tastes. A finely carved Antwerp altarpiece from about 1525 sits in the family chapel. The building also houses the fifteenth-century vestments of Whalley Abbey, moved here for safekeeping. A bequest from local brewer Edward Stocks Massey provided an annual fund for art purchases from 1921 onwards. Visitors walk through rooms once used by the Towneley family, now filled with more than 300 oil paintings. Half of these hang in public view across the galleries, alongside watercolours by Turner and local artist Noel H. Leaver. The collection includes Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite works by Burne-Jones, Waterhouse, Alma-Tadema and Zoffany. Egyptian antiquities, historic furniture and social history displays tell the story of the family and the region. Outside, the parkland of 62 acres offers a quiet place to stroll among trees and open meadows.