Museum building and front garden ; Geranium robertianum; Ranunculus repens''.
Building This c. 1890s Yorkshire
gritstone building was once a bailiff's house, then a farm house, and it still has the original big, old, panelled front door. It is of the traditional rural, symmetrical, four-up, four-down domestic design which was common in the
Georgian era and continued throughout the 19th century. This type of house has two rooms each side of the front door, stairs in the middle leading back from the front door, and two upstairs bedrooms each side of the stairwell, with a 19th-century dressing room above the front hall. The walls between front and back rooms are
load-bearing, and supported by the two chimneys, which allow fireplaces in all eight main rooms.
Bradford City Council has built an extra ground-floor room onto the left hand side, and countryside centre specialises in interactive displays for all ages, indoor and out. When the museum is open, the public can walk through the ground floor rooms of the museum, and through the back and front gardens which are dedicated to wildlife discovery. The whole site and surrounding moor and glen are used for public groups on Wild Wednesdays and on guided walks, and for school groups when the museum is closed to the public: all these groups by appointment. There are bird feeders which attract various
finches and
tits, and an animal hutch for a rabbit or
guinea pig. There is a double gate so that the animal could occasionally be safely let out to graze under staff supervision. In the far corner of the back wall is a
wormery.
Honeycomb and remains of wasp nest On the wall opposite Reception there used to be an indoor
beehive with an observation panel for the children, but it was dismantled due to
colony collapse disorder.
Computer nature guide and ID-by-touch box This computer uses a
Dangerous Creatures CD-ROM, a program for children which allows them to learn about wildlife outside the
UK while being entertained. It is situated halfway along the wall opposite Reception. Near the computer is an identification-by-touch display of natural objects.
Interactive animal ID displays On the same side wall opposite Reception there are two interactive boards. One, made of painted plywood, is for young children, and has large wooden handles which cause rabbits, birds and other animals to pop up out of holes in the screen. The other is for slightly older children, and contains safety-glass panels with pictured or
mounted animals behind. There is a row of wooden flaps painted with animal pictures. The children try to name the animals, then lift the flaps to read the names.
Mounted birds in glass case This safety-glass display is behind the entrance door, and set low enough for young children to see some of the
mounted birds at eye-level. It contains garden birds, a
wren's nest and a
tawny owl. This display plays birdsong recordings, which young children can learn quickly. This serves as an introduction to
pishing.
Reception Staff at the Reception desk have answer-cards for the various quizzes.
Local archaeology and history room . This room contains displays of archaeological, geological and local history exhibits which are aimed at both adults and children. The museum's prime exhibit, the Heygate stone, is central. The walls have information boards, and there are various other exhibits here.
Heygate stone This is one of the nationally important
Rombalds Moor cup and ring rocks. They were engraved in the
Neolithic era, and the larger engraved rocks have been left on the moor as it is thought that their meaning may be associated with the landscape. This more portable rock is in the museum for safety: the plough-marks on the rock indicate one of the reasons for this. The Heygate stone is one of the clearest examples of this type of
petroglyph. A cast of the engraving reveals that the two larger ring-marks are superimposed on the others. The stone was found in Near Hey Gate Field near
Baildon by a local landowner on 25 September 2001, and it is believed that it was originally a rock with a larger area of 5000-year-old
petroglyphs that had been quarried nearby in recent history, then dressed on two sides for wall-building. It is at the landowner's wish that the stone is preserved at the museum, as near as possible to its original site, because it cannot now be returned to the position where it lay in the
Neolithic era. and
medieval artefacts display.
Local finds This glass case contains
Neolithic and
medieval items found in the
Baildon Moor area. There is an iron sickle, and a
Neolithic burial
urn found in 1904 on Pennithorne Hill. There is a
medieval jug and a lead
spindle whorl found on Hope Hill. From the same place are some Neolithic
arrow heads, thumbscrapers and piercers - all made of
knapped flint. There are also
Roman coins, one of which was found in
Shipley Glen, across the road.
Quern-stone Within reach of children, there is an
Iron Age beehive
quern-stone with removable wooden handle and plenty of grain for grinding. Visitors are invited to look at a drawing of the inner structure of the object, and to try to work out how to grind the corn.
Local fossils '' fossil (huge type of
horsetail). There is a display of locally-found fossils including the big
Calamites, a
horsetail-type, and the little
Gastrioceras, a kind of
ammonite. There are also fossils of
Lepidodendron,
Stigmaria,
Carbonicola,
Dunbarella and
Lingula: all found in the
Baildon Moor area.
Local geology There is an information board about local sedimentary rock, with a display of small, loose stones for children to handle. These include
ironstone, iron slag,
gritstone,
coal,
sandstone and
shale. The information board has a cross-section of
Baildon Moor, showing the layers of different sedimentary rock and faults.
Local oral history This is heard via the headphones display. Image:Brackenhall 019.jpg|
Archaeology and local history displays. Image:Brackenhall 020.jpg|
Archaeology and local history displays. Image:Brackenhall 032.jpg|Cast of Heygate stone, showing
cup and ring overlaps. Image:Brackenhall 022.jpg|Interactive
quern-stone display. Image:Brackenhall 023.jpg|Interactive
quern-stone display. Image:Cliffecastlemus 016.jpg|
Quern-stones at
Cliffe Castle Museum, showing central wooden spindle. Image:Brackenhall_Gastrioceras.jpg|
Gastrioceras fossil (
ammonoid: coiled-shell swimming animal). Image:Brackenhall 037.jpg|
Geological samples, for visitors to handle. Image:Brackenhall 028.jpg|Headphones with recordings of
Shipley Glen and
Baildon Moor local history.
Front door lobby In the lobby or original entrance hall you can see the inside of the heavy, panelled, original front door. There is a sheaf of wildlife-identification quiz-sheets, and a board of numbered pictures to identify. The room is also used for educational group visits. and dusty books, together with hand-coloured drawings and a brass
optical microscope. They can compare what was once known as
botanizing with the modern muddy-boots-and-
fieldwork approach, expensive cameras and cheap field-guides.
Autumnal nature tableau Here is another example of the
taxidermist's art. There are autumn seeds to identify in this display, and an opportunity for a close-up view of some of the
UK's more shy animals: the
weasel,
shrew and
jay. Image:Brackenhall 050.jpg|Exhibition and activity room. Image:Brackenhall 052.jpg|Display of past and present
botanizing. Image:Brackenhall 053.jpg|19th-century brass
optical microscope Image:Brackenhall 048.jpg|Quiz forms in lobby
Back garden and
Welsh poppy growing in a bath
Back yard This is accessed via the back door of the Entrance room, or by walking left across the front lawn. In the back yard are the toilets, and an animal hutch.
Side garden In the side garden there is a raised lawn, with a minibeast trapdoor laid on the bare earth. This allows small invertebrates to shelter under it, and children can expose them by lifting the trapdoor. The trapdoor is light enough for a five-year-old to lift easily.
Slugs,
snails,
earthworms,
woodlouse and
millipedes are likely inhabitants here. On the lawn is another animal hutch, a safety cage for beehives - disused due to
colony collapse disorder - and a shed with
batboxes fixed to the side. There are two old
bramley apple trees,
Side path Here is an old bathtub full of wild flowers growing, and a safety cage for the now-disused entrance to the indoor beehive.
Bumble bees still constantly try to use the entrance in early summer. Wellington boots dry on the bench: it can be muddy here for most of the year. Image:Brackenhall 062.jpg|Animal hutch in back yard. Image:Brackenhall 063.jpg|Minibeast trapdoor, for children to observe
slug,
woodlouse,
millipede,
snail etc. Image:Brackenhall 065.jpg|Slug under minibeast trapdoor,
Arion fasciatus. Image:Brackenhall 068.jpg|Backyard view of hutch and shed with
bat-boxes. Image:Brackenhall 071.jpg|
cup and ring marks created by
archaeologists with a deer
antler pick Image:Brackenhall 073.jpg|Wellington boots drying on a bench Image:Brackenhall 074.jpg|Safety cage around entrance to indoor
hive (now dismantled) Image:Brackenhall 069.jpg|Disused
beehives Pond area The children's dipping pond is accessed from the side lawn or from the front lawn. It contains
yellow flags,
tadpoles,
frogs,
newts, efts and other pondlife. Image:Brackenhall 075.jpg|Wildlife pond for children, with flag leaves. Image:Brackenhall 077.jpg|
Green alkanet (
pentaglottis sempervirens) Image:Brackenhall 079.jpg|
Yellow flag in pond Image:Brackenhall 078.jpg|Closeup of
green alkanet (
pentaglottis sempervirens) == Baildon Moor and Shipley Glen ==