Hough End Hall ….. as most of us haven’t seen you for over half a century

So, it’s been a long time but at last you have come out of the shadows after being hidden behind an indifferent and some would say ugly 60s office block.

2023

Andy Robertson has been down to your site recording the demolition of one of those two blots on the landscape, and now we can all gaze across Mauldeth Road West and see you revealed in something of your Elizabethan splendour.

And to those who will make sniffy comments about the arrival of the Lidl supermarket which might obscure parts of you again, I will just say many will welcome a shop on the spot.

As for those who mumble that you are just a poor imitation of what you once were that is true.

2023

Your fine rooms have been gutted, your top floor closed and much of your exterior damaged in a botched restoration job in the 1960s.

But you are part of Chorlton's history stretching back 426 years, and I can see you as you sort of looked over half a century ago.

All of that said I am just a tad economical with the truth, because had you looked across along the processional way from what is now the park,at the edge on the right of the pictures would have been part of a long barn which extended up to Mauldeth Road West and along what was that demolished office block.

So not quite the view Sir Nicholas would have encountered. 

Location; Hough End Hall

2019

2023

Pictures; Hough End Hall revealed, 2023, and in 2019, from the collection of Andy Robertson