Lets Make Hough End Hall Ours

The Hall today, © 2013 Peter Topping

I do have a fond spot for Hough End Hall and it is a place I have regularly written about.*

And now there are plans a foot to bring it into community use after many years as an office complex and restaurant.**

Built in 1596, it is a traditional Elizabethan brick house designed to imitate the letter E.

The design of these houses tended to follow the same pattern: on the ground floor there was the hall, which took up most of the building and had a long gallery directly above it which had windows on three sides and a fireplace on the fourth.

The Hall in 1900

The kitchen and living areas were contained in the two arms that jutted out from the main part of the building.

Now Hough End Hall which was just outside the township in Withington had been home to the Mosley’s while Barlow Hall on the southern edge of Chorlton had been owned by the Barlow family.

Both in their different ways fit into the conventional image of old landed families.

The Mosley’s had moved into commerce in the late sixteenth century, sided with the Royalist cause in the Civil War and suffered  from spendthrift  gambling members in the eighteenth, finally selling the Hall on to the Egerton’s around 1751.

By 1847 it was a farmhouse and was the home of Henry Jackson who farmed 220 acres beyond the eastern boundary of the township.

This made it one of the largest farms in the area, and Jackson employed 13 labourers, nine of whom lived in the hall.  It was still an impressive sight, leading one observer to write that its
‘ivy-covered walls, its clustered chimneys and its gabled roof, present a picturesque and pleasing appearance."***

The Hall in 1933

With its transition to a farmhouse the large communal areas were partitioned off into smaller rooms and the census of 1911 describes Hough End Hall with eleven rooms.

In the 20th century its fate seemed uncertain despite calls for its restoration.

At various times the Corporation entertained plans to take it over but these came to nought and in the 1920s it was nearly demolished when Mauldeth Road West was being extended.

And it has been subject to horrendous acts of vandalism including the decision by the Egerton’s to strip out some of its period features.

Finally in 1965 a property company undertook to save the hall, restore it while building two office blocks on either side.

Not everyone was pleased with the restoration which the secretary of the Ancient Monuments Society described as “botched.”****

The Hall, a community asset for Chorlton

Since then it has undergone a number of different uses but all have eventually foundered, so it is exciting that there are moves to bring the hall into community use.

And it is on the market now for less than £300,000.

For those interested in this project I suggest you visit Hough End Hall Lets Make it Ours, https://www.facebook.com/groups/houghendhall/

*Hough End Hall,  http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Hough%20End%20Hall

** Hough End Hall Lets Make it Ours, https://www.facebook.com/groups/houghendhall/ And if you follow the link through.in http://www.gladtobe.in/ you can fill in the survey and have your say as to what it can be used for now.

***Brooker, Rev John, A History of the Chapels of Didsbury and Chorlton, Chetham Society, Manchester, 1857,

****Hall or Nothing, Robert Waterhouse, the Manchester Guardian, 1973

Painting, Hough End Hall © 2013 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,
Web: www.paintinsfrompictures.www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk 

Pictures; Hough End Hall circa 1900 from the collection of Philip Lloyd  and the Hall in 1933, by F. Blyth, from A Short history of Chorlton-cum-Hardy by J.D. Blyth, 1933