Inside Hough End Hall, ..........the start of an adventure

In the garden with the Lomas children circa 1900

I am off on one of those adventures into the past and am not really sure where it will lead.

The task is to try and recreate the inside of Hough End Hall.

It was built in 1596 and conforms to the classic Elizabethan design which imitates the letter E.

The exterior looks authentic but I have my doubts that what you see is exactly how it was when it was built or for that matter as it was in the early years of the 20th century.

That said it does look like the countless pictures that were taken during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

But the inside is a different story.  Judging from my one visit a few years ago when it was a restaurant and from the pictures that were recently posted the place resembles a large open space with nothing that dates much earlier than the 1960s.

The Hall, 1910

Now I never expected there to be much that looked Elizabethan.

The staircase was according to some sources ripped out by the Egerton’s and reassembled in Tatton Hall and the communal areas converted into smaller rooms during its time as a farmhouse.

It doesn’t help that there are no drawings or photographs of the interior and all we have to go on are a set of plans and drawings which were made in 1938 by the Egerton estate.

They include some fine line drawings of the building, details of the  windows and the materials used on the roof as well as all the out houses.

But there is a prohibition on either copying or photographing the plans.  I cannot understand why when the estate lodged the papers in the City’s Archives in 1965 they felt it necessary to insist on such a condition but there it is.

That said there are those who remember it and have agreed to help me recreate the lost interior.
Oliver Bailey’s family owned the hall for a while and continued to use the out buildings as an addition to their farm at Park Brow.

They kept pigs and chickens on site and part of the hall on at the southern end continued to be a smithy while one of the barns was used by someone to breed rabbits.

And as you would expect during the century and a bit that it was a farm additional buildings were constructed all of which have since vanished.

The Hall in 1895

Now Oliver has warned me that a full half century has elapsed since he wandered inside the building but I am confident that he and his brother and sister will remember enough to begin to recreate the lost interior.

And during our conversation he remembered the mangle room which was directly above the drawing room on the first floor and needed no prompting to tell me about the smithy or the windowless room by the stair well.

So bit by bit I think we will uncover some at least of what the Hall was like.  I doubt that we will ever be able to recreate its Elizabethan character but I am confident that something of what it was like during the 19th century will emerge, and that will a start.

Pictures; the garden of the Hall circa 1900 from the Lloyd Collection, the Hall looking west courtesy of Nora Templar 1910 and in 1895 from the Wesleyan Handbook