Barlow Hall and its occupants, ............ an ancient Chorlton family, the radical on trial for conspiracy and the banker

Barlow Hall is old and while there may have been a building on the site dating from the Middle Ages, the present half timbered structure dates probably from the reign of Henry VIII. Little of the original structure was visible by the 1840s.

Most of the timber work had been covered in plaster or hidden under ivy.

The old great hall which occupied most of the building and open to the roof had been divided off to create two stories, with the lower floor given over to three entertaining rooms.

The Barlow’s had settled here by the fourteenth century, appear to have lived a quiet existence until like many they were caught up in the conflicts over religion in the sixteenth century.

They had adhered to the old faith and been persecuted during the reign of the first Elizabeth.

The family continued to live at the Hall until the last died in 1773 and the estate was sold to the Egerton’s twelve years later.

During the later part of the eighteenth century and into the next it had been home of the radical Thomas Walker, and later to the leading Whig businessman Shakepeare Phillips and in June 1848 to William Cunliffe Brooks.

According to various observers Cunliffe Brooks was keen not only to preserve the building but to share his love of the hall.

This interest never appeared to have left him and led Mrs C Williamson to write in her Recollections of Fallowfield, that his “love for old things is so great that every relic is sacred to him, and even mindful alterations are made in such close imitation of old, they look the real thing.”

This was a passion which was to lead him to display a piece of the original timber which had been exposed after a fire in 1879,and own Chorlton historian may well have been speaking from firsthand experience when he advised that “Mrs Brook’s morning room is worthy of a visit, with its quaint old china, and the vestibule containing some fine old Furniture and an engraving of Wellington with his autograph.”

And the Hall is still there today, home to a golf course.

Picture; Barlow Hall from the collection of Rita Bishop, the Lloyd collection in the 19th century  and Andrew Robertson, 2014