Experts have discovered the year that Pontefract's Counting House - one of the oldest buildings in Yorkshire - was originally built

The Counting House dates to 1609 – four years after Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament in the Gunpowder Plot.

A dendrochronology test, similar to how a tree would be aged, was used to determine when the Swales Yard building was completed.

A report by the experts who conducted the study said: “Prior to the tree-ring dating being undertaken it was thought that the Counting House might date to the sixteenth century or potentially be even earlier in origin and that it was the result of more than one phase of building construction.

"It is thought to date to the sixteenth or seventeenth century but much altered in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

"Locally it is held to be possibly fourteenth century and very significant as it is one of very few visibly timber framed buildings left in the area.”

It said that the timber used to create the building appears to have been sourced from nearby woodland.

Building owner Guy Lister is working to bring the hall back into use.

He said: “It dates from around the time that Protestants and Catholics were basically at war with each other, and where there was civil war going on in the country.

“It’s interesting to understand what was going on in the wider picture when they were building the Counting House.”

He said it was finished 40 years before Pontefract Castle was demolished, which would mean stone from the castle was not used to construct the Counting House as many people have believed.

Mr Lister has been working on the project with his son, Jack, 17, who is studying at New College Pontefract.

He considers it to be a family project that has been passed down through generations.

Mr Lister is seeking tenants for the building, and is open to a variety of uses suggested by local people, from a heritage crafts centre to a liquorice museum.

It closed as a pub in 2012 and has been vacant since.