Our own Elizabethan country house …… sixty years ago

This is Hough End Hall as it was on a summer’s day in 1965.

The Hall has a long and mixed history and is a place I often write about. *

It was built in 1596 by Sir Nicholas Mosley and was all a country house should be for a man who had done gooder in London and had returned to live in splendid retirement.

It’s mixed past included being the Mosley home, and later a farmhouse for over 250 years before becoming a restaurant, briefly an office suit and a restaurant again.

During the immediate years after the millennium, it stood empty with an uncertain future which mirrored a similar period in the early and mid-20th century.

That earlier time nearly saw it demolished when plans for Mauldeth Road West were being considered, and while it escaped it became the subject of various proposals to turn it into a community centre and a museum.

Eventually it was acquired by a local farmer who in turn sold it on to a developer, who very lightly followed a brief to restore it.

That restoration used the wrong materials, and at some point, the interior was gutted to create two large spaces at ground level and above.  Also, in the process the second floor was lost, and two office blocks were constructed to the west of the hall, almost totally obscuring Nicholas Mosley’s pride and joy.

They can only be described as “the abomination of desolation”, brutal, ugly and with no charm.**

The restoration did at least put a roof back on the building and end its association with groups of children who used it as playground while searching for ghosts.

The exact details of the sale, the restoration and those office blocks are now hazy. 

But we do have the memories of Oliver Bailey who acquired the hall, and a series of letters and articles from 1962 through to 1972 in the Manchester Guardian and Guardian newspapers as well as a book on the story of the building. ***

Along with these there are a heap of paintings, photographs and plans stretching back to the early 19th century, including a wonderful set of images taken in the mid-1960s of kids playing in the building by Roger Shelley.

To these can now be added these there from the 1965 Collection.

Location; Hough End Hall

Pictures; the Hall in 1965 from the 1965 Collection

*Hough End Hall, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Hough%20End%20Hall

**“the abomination of desolation” The Book of Daniel 12:11

***Hough End Hall The Story, Andrew Simpson, Peter Topping, 2015