View from Owlers today looking south

View from Owlers today looking south towards Mytholmroyd and Cragg Vale.

Owlers the House

We think the name Owlers is related to the practice of owling, a common term from the late 17th century for the smuggling of sheep or wool from England to another country, particularly France.

Owlers is listed as follows: House of mid-17th century raised to two storeys in mid-18th century. Hammer dressed stone, stone slate roof. Two cells. Quoins. Doorway with monolithic jambs has stop chamfered surround. Double chamfered mullioned window of five lights, doorway with monolithic jambs has lintel dated 1746, double chamfered mullioned window of four lights.

Lintel dated 1746

The first floor has chamfered mullioned windows of two lights and three lights. Left hand return wall has two-light double chamfered mullioned window. Coped gable with kneelers and stack. One other stack. Interior reveals earlier roof line in the gable before the roof was raised.

18th Halifax Scouts GHQ

Back in the 1920s the 18th Halifax Scouts had their GHQ at Owlers.

Lintel dated 1746

John and Barry, two of our four Herdwick sheep that live at Owlers.

Today's temperatures and dew points

Today's temperatures and dew points.

Rose standing between the Giant Rockery and the Vegetable and Fruit Beds

Rose standing between the Giant Rockery and the Vegetable and Fruit Beds.

One of the oak trees in autumn

The oak tree in autumn that stands between the Field and Top Banks.

Part of the Front Beds below the house

Part of the Front Beds below the house.

The Sycamore tree in winter

The sycamore tree in winter.

Life at Owlers

Click on any image to view that image in the Owlers Photo Gallery. This site is best viewed with Safari or Firefox.

Life at Owlers means enjoying living on the south facing side of the Upper Calder Valley above Mytholmroyd, with views that span from Sowerby to the east, Cragg Vale to the south, and Lower Rough Head to the west. The convenience of the market town of Hebden Bridge is about a mile away. The minster town of Halifax is just eight miles away, and the cities of Leeds and Manchester are 24 and 27 miles distant respectively.

New drystone walls, flagging and cobbles

Owlers Garden

When we took over Owlers in 2008, it already had a sizeable garden developed from the surrounding hillside fields. However, as part of the renovation and remodelling of the whole property, many significant changes were made and new planting areas were developed. In some cases, gaps have been filled and the original planting has been restored. Some new areas of the garden have been created from what was both a field and a hen run. The hard landscaping has also been improved with new drystone walls, flagged areas and cobbles to the lane.

Owlers Weather

A white Christmas

If you want to know what the weather is or has been like at Owlers, take a look at our weather pages. Our WS-2300 weather station consists of three sensors mounted on our potting shed - an anemometer to measure wind speed and direction, a tipper gauge to measure rainfall, and a thermo-hydro sensor to measure temperature, humidity and air pressure. Every eight seconds this weather data is transmitted via cable to a base station in the house, which is in turn connected to our web server, an iMac running Apache 2 under Mac OS X. Our server also runs wview, which retrieves the weather data from the base station, storing it in an SQLite database, and then generating our weather pages, which are updated every few minutes. From the above six measurements our system also calculates wind chill, heat index and dew point, as well as daily, monthly and annual highs, lows and averages.

Owlers Solar Power

2012 PV Monthly Energy Yield (kWh)   2012 HW Monthly Energy Yield (kWh)

Our solar power generation systems were installed to reduce our carbon footprint at Owlers. They consist of a solar photovoltaic (PV) system capable of generating peak power of 3.5 kW (around 20 kWh on a sunny day), and a solar hot water system that provides all of our hot water in the summer months and contributes significantly to heating our water during the rest of the year. We estimate that the combined effect of both systems reduces our CO2 generation by about four tonnes per year. Our solar power pages show annual, monthly and daily energy yields for our PV system and annual and monthly energy yields for our hot water system. The daily yield of our PV system also gives a good idea of how much sunshine we get at Owlers during each month of the year.

Life at Owlers Copyright © 2010-2013 Paul Ruffle and Rose Wheeler. All Rights Reserved.