Now given that Hough End Hall is 418 years old and due a birthday soon sadly there are not that many pictures of the place.
It does feature in a range of postcards from the 19th century along with some privately made photographs and a few water colours but that is it.
More recently local artist Peter Topping has set about rectifying this by producing some paintings of what it might have looked like.
And before any one reaches for the lap top to express indignation that an artist in the 21st century should try to recreate a scene of the place from sixty odd years ago I would point out that Peter has used original photographs and called on the few colour prints we have to give a sense of the Hall.
Recreations are fraught with dangers and can lead to misinterpretations but are useful and a way of beginning to understand a building and its context.
Now this scene I know well, not only because I have seen the original black and white photograph but because my old friend Oliver Bailey has described the scene to me.
His family held the tenancy of the hall and surrounding land from the outbreak of the last world war and later purchased them from the Egerton Estate.
The family kept horses and “along the side of the plot that borders Mauldeth Road there was a field and in front of that a line of what had been loose boxes where my father kept pigs and the ones nearest Nell Lane were used for horses for a while – as kids we kept ours there, Silver, Nils and Betty when they weren’t out in the fields.”*
All of which brings the hall a little closer which is fine by me.
Painting; Hough End Hall circa 1945, © 2014 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook: Paintings from Pictures
*Oliver Bailey, 2014
More recently local artist Peter Topping has set about rectifying this by producing some paintings of what it might have looked like.
And before any one reaches for the lap top to express indignation that an artist in the 21st century should try to recreate a scene of the place from sixty odd years ago I would point out that Peter has used original photographs and called on the few colour prints we have to give a sense of the Hall.
Recreations are fraught with dangers and can lead to misinterpretations but are useful and a way of beginning to understand a building and its context.
Now this scene I know well, not only because I have seen the original black and white photograph but because my old friend Oliver Bailey has described the scene to me.
His family held the tenancy of the hall and surrounding land from the outbreak of the last world war and later purchased them from the Egerton Estate.
The family kept horses and “along the side of the plot that borders Mauldeth Road there was a field and in front of that a line of what had been loose boxes where my father kept pigs and the ones nearest Nell Lane were used for horses for a while – as kids we kept ours there, Silver, Nils and Betty when they weren’t out in the fields.”*
All of which brings the hall a little closer which is fine by me.
Painting; Hough End Hall circa 1945, © 2014 Peter Topping, Paintings from Pictures,
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
Facebook: Paintings from Pictures
*Oliver Bailey, 2014
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