The thing about researching the past is that you can have good days and days when despite hours of burrowing deep into the past there is nothing to show for it.
And yes today was one of those.
I was set fair to uncover something more of the story of Hough End Hall.
The broad outline of the Hall’s past is clear but as ever the devil is in the detail and this is especially so of that period when the Hall moved out of agricultural use into the hands of a succession of a property companies and a very uncertain future.
From 1597 till sometime around 1751 it had belonged to the Mosley family and had been one of their family homes.
That said during the 18th century it might already have been rented out and certainly during the second half of that century and all through the next it was a farmhouse.
Most of the occupants are now lost to history but during the 1830s and 40 it was home to Henry Jackson who farmed 200 acres of land and on his death in 1847 passed to the Lomax family who were still there in 1940.
Today nothing is left of the interior which would have been familiar to both Henry Jackson and the Lomax family.
The grand Elizabethan staircase was taken out by the Egerton’s sometime before 1911 and the small family rooms which had been created out of the large communal areas have now gone and all that is left are two barn like spaces on the ground and first floor.
What is is worse is that virtually all the internal features disappeared during a short thirty year span from the mid 1960s through to 1990s.
There are plenty of eyewitness accounts to what was still there when the Hall was empty but had yet to fall into the hands of the developers.
Now who is responsible is difficult to ascertain, certainly in the view of those who wanted the building sympathetically restored what was done in the name of restoration was a bodge.
All of which led me to the Ref and the minutes of the Planning Committee for 1964 when I was fairly certain that I would find details of the plans submitted by the developers.
It appears I was out by two years and I will have to go back and search the 1962 minutes along with other documents which David the archivist has suggested. All a tad frustrating but with the promise of discovering more on what the old farmhouse looked like and perhaps something on who began to pull it all out.
In 1911 he Victoria History of Lancaster recorded that “the interior of the building, which is now used as a farm-house, has few points of interest, having been a good deal modernized and stripped of its old oak, including a handsome staircase at the east end, which was removed by Lord Egerton to Tatton Lodge.”
But that rather misses the point because it was a farmhouse for perhaps half of its history and given that I know the last two families who occupied it for nearly a century the building they knew fascinates me.
But for now I have to be content with being able to date when the Hall passed from the Lomax family.
They had been tenants of Hough End since 1847 when they took over from Mr Jackson.
Samuel Lomax died in 1930 and his wife in September 1940 which will be when the Bailey’s of Park Bridge took over the tenancy.
Slowly bit by bit more of the Lomax time in the hall is coming to light, like the advert of a milk boy in the Manchester Evening News dated 1915.
It may not be the stuff that great history is made of but it is a connection with Mr and Mrs Lomax and by extension with the Bailey’s who took the milk round over.
And the knowledge that like farmers before them they were still employing staff who lived in.
The 1938 Egerton survey of the Hall shows the bedrooms of the labouers'.alas they too have gone.
But I travel in hope that more will come out.
Pictures; of the Hall, from the Lloyd Collection and Wesleyan Handbook, 1896 and advert courtesy of Sally Dervan
 |
| Sometime in the 1890s |
I was set fair to uncover something more of the story of Hough End Hall.
The broad outline of the Hall’s past is clear but as ever the devil is in the detail and this is especially so of that period when the Hall moved out of agricultural use into the hands of a succession of a property companies and a very uncertain future.
From 1597 till sometime around 1751 it had belonged to the Mosley family and had been one of their family homes.
That said during the 18th century it might already have been rented out and certainly during the second half of that century and all through the next it was a farmhouse.
Most of the occupants are now lost to history but during the 1830s and 40 it was home to Henry Jackson who farmed 200 acres of land and on his death in 1847 passed to the Lomax family who were still there in 1940.
Today nothing is left of the interior which would have been familiar to both Henry Jackson and the Lomax family.
The grand Elizabethan staircase was taken out by the Egerton’s sometime before 1911 and the small family rooms which had been created out of the large communal areas have now gone and all that is left are two barn like spaces on the ground and first floor.
What is is worse is that virtually all the internal features disappeared during a short thirty year span from the mid 1960s through to 1990s.
 |
| Looking east towards the Hall circa 1900 |
Now who is responsible is difficult to ascertain, certainly in the view of those who wanted the building sympathetically restored what was done in the name of restoration was a bodge.
All of which led me to the Ref and the minutes of the Planning Committee for 1964 when I was fairly certain that I would find details of the plans submitted by the developers.
It appears I was out by two years and I will have to go back and search the 1962 minutes along with other documents which David the archivist has suggested. All a tad frustrating but with the promise of discovering more on what the old farmhouse looked like and perhaps something on who began to pull it all out.
In 1911 he Victoria History of Lancaster recorded that “the interior of the building, which is now used as a farm-house, has few points of interest, having been a good deal modernized and stripped of its old oak, including a handsome staircase at the east end, which was removed by Lord Egerton to Tatton Lodge.”
But that rather misses the point because it was a farmhouse for perhaps half of its history and given that I know the last two families who occupied it for nearly a century the building they knew fascinates me.
 |
| The advert from 1915 |
They had been tenants of Hough End since 1847 when they took over from Mr Jackson.
Samuel Lomax died in 1930 and his wife in September 1940 which will be when the Bailey’s of Park Bridge took over the tenancy.
Slowly bit by bit more of the Lomax time in the hall is coming to light, like the advert of a milk boy in the Manchester Evening News dated 1915.
It may not be the stuff that great history is made of but it is a connection with Mr and Mrs Lomax and by extension with the Bailey’s who took the milk round over.
And the knowledge that like farmers before them they were still employing staff who lived in.
The 1938 Egerton survey of the Hall shows the bedrooms of the labouers'.alas they too have gone.
But I travel in hope that more will come out.
Pictures; of the Hall, from the Lloyd Collection and Wesleyan Handbook, 1896 and advert courtesy of Sally Dervan
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