Today I am going to do something different and start an open story on Hough End Hall where people contribute their memories.
Recently I ran a series of stories based on the recollections of Oliver Bailey whose family were the last tenant farmers of the Hall.*
And as I was writing them another old friend chipped in with tales of playing on the hay ricks and along the Brook behind the main buildings.
These stories have started others off and I will start with Tina who
remembered that the Hall “was called Bailey`s farm when I was a child---pigs and peacocks !!-----the hall became derelict and was known locally as the haunted house ----forbidden to play there which meant we did !!!------very handy being a pupil at Chorlton Park school!
That Elizabethan staircase was something else-(the reclamation of interiors was unheard of way back in 1959 !!(flushed doors were to die for------none of that nasty panelling that held the dust !”
Now these little snippets are fascinating not least because they are a rare look into the Hall and begin to help understand what the interior was like before it vanished completely sometime in the 1960s and 70s.
I knew the original staircase had been taken by the Egerton’s and is commonly believed to have gone to Tatton Hall but was not sure when.
And I doubt that there will be an evidence trail. The estate papers appear to have been divided up and deposited with the relevant archive and local history libraries around the county and I have yet to track this little bit of the story.
Which just at present leaves us with this from 1911, "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."**
It may be that nothing now does exist on paper of that move which leaves us with just what people remember and so I hope more will emerge.
All of which is a thank you to Tina and a call to the rest of you.
Pictures; Hough End Hall in 1933, by F. Blyth, from A Short history of Chorlton-cum-Hardy by J.D. Blyth, 1933
*Hough End Hall, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Hough%20End%20Hall
**A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 4, William Farrer & J. Brownbill (editors), 1911
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=41425
And as I was writing them another old friend chipped in with tales of playing on the hay ricks and along the Brook behind the main buildings.
These stories have started others off and I will start with Tina who
remembered that the Hall “was called Bailey`s farm when I was a child---pigs and peacocks !!-----the hall became derelict and was known locally as the haunted house ----forbidden to play there which meant we did !!!------very handy being a pupil at Chorlton Park school!
That Elizabethan staircase was something else-(the reclamation of interiors was unheard of way back in 1959 !!(flushed doors were to die for------none of that nasty panelling that held the dust !”
Now these little snippets are fascinating not least because they are a rare look into the Hall and begin to help understand what the interior was like before it vanished completely sometime in the 1960s and 70s.
I knew the original staircase had been taken by the Egerton’s and is commonly believed to have gone to Tatton Hall but was not sure when.
And I doubt that there will be an evidence trail. The estate papers appear to have been divided up and deposited with the relevant archive and local history libraries around the county and I have yet to track this little bit of the story.
Which just at present leaves us with this from 1911, "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."**
It may be that nothing now does exist on paper of that move which leaves us with just what people remember and so I hope more will emerge.
All of which is a thank you to Tina and a call to the rest of you.
Pictures; Hough End Hall in 1933, by F. Blyth, from A Short history of Chorlton-cum-Hardy by J.D. Blyth, 1933
*Hough End Hall, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Hough%20End%20Hall
**A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 4, William Farrer & J. Brownbill (editors), 1911
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=41425
No comments:
Post a Comment