Hough End Hall ......... the last forty years of its story

The Hall in July 2014

Today I went looking for the story of Hough End Hall’s most recent past.

Now the outline of some of its 400 years is there to be uncovered.*

It was built in 1596, was a family home and centre of a large country estate, and after being acquired by the Egerton family in the mid 18th century became a farm house and stayed in agricultural use till the 1960s when it was bought by a development company.

During the next decade the two big office blocks were built which now almost hide the Hall which has had an uncertain future ever since then.

Even before its purchase by that development company there had been a number of ideas about what to do with it. After all it was no longer the centre of a family estate and as the farm land around it shrank its role as a farm house was almost at an end.

A menu from 2010

In the 1930s there were calls to take into the municipal ownership and transform it into some form of community asset but the Council did not want it and finally with its purchase by the development company there was speculation that it might be used as a restaurant or night club.

And charting that last few decades has been a little torturous but with the help of a few newspaper stories and the odd memory it has been possible to discover something of that story.

In the 1970s into the 80s it was a restaurant and bar and there will be plenty of people who will remember going there.

Some have told me of dining out under  the great oak beams which over the centuries had turned almost black and more recently others have posted of working in the place during that time.**

Alas the beams I discovered recently were false, made of  resin and quite hollow and along with smaller imitation wooden beams and plaster hid the original ceiling.

The menu  from 2010 found in the kitchen

These in turn were obscured by another false ceiling made of polystyrene tiles when the Hall became a suite of offices sometime around 1985 which according to a newspaper report was when what was left of the original features were ripped out.**

And that pretty much takes us up to today.

In 2010 it was reopened as a restaurant and seemed to have lasted just a year.

It has now on the market for £300,000 and there is a campaign to buy it and convert it into a community centre for Chorlton and Withington.***

I hope that this will be the final outcome for a building which has been much knocked about and deserves a new lease of life.

In the meantime I would welcome any memories, pictures or memorabilia from its last fifty years to add to what we already know.

And in that odd way the internet works some of the references to its last period as a restaurant can still be seen, including comments of those who went there.

I was in there just a few days ago and was struck by just how little is left of what was once there.  But I did clock the menu  on the kitchen wall which  with a few fittings is all that is left of its last period as a restaurant.

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson, 2014 

Coming soon........ more on the recollections of the Hall in the 1940s, a rant on the unsympathetic restoration of the place and lots of paintings of the building.

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

** Hough End Hall 1596 – Now, June 21, 2011, http://www.mancky.co.uk/?p=3307

***Manchester Evening News, January 15, 2010, http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/hall-given-new-lifeline-by-blast-880740

***Hough End Hall rvival, Let's Make it Ours,https://www.facebook.com/groups/houghendhall/



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