Hough End Hall still a working farm in the 1950s

This will be the last of the descriptions of the Hall from Oliver Bailey whose family rented and then owned Hough End and the surrounding land.

The Hall from Nell Lane, in 1952

It is a fascinating account not least because it is the only detailed description of the place during the 20th century.

There are a few anecdotes about the place from people who remember it as children and there is the 1938 survey commissioned by the Egerton Estate.

But most of these anecdotal accounts are vague and lack detail while the Egerton survey cannot be copied or photographed.

Back in the 19th century there is a short description of the Hall by the historian  John Booker which includes an engraving * and an inventory of the contents of the farm in 1849 published in the Manchester Guardian but this  sheds little light on the Hall itself.

So Oliver has cornered the market on descriptions of the Hall in the 20th century and at anytime come to that.

And in the process of sharing these memories he provided a plan of the buildings which to my knowledge apart from the Egerton survey is the only idea we have of what was there.

The Hall and surround buildings 1950s

It confirms that part of the hall was a smithy and right up to the end the place was a working farm with Mr Bailey’s pigs, horses and cattle and Jimmy Ryan’s rabbits.

“At one time my father had Highland cattle in the field where the school once was and there may be pictures in the Manchester Evening News archive. 

"My memory might be playing tricks there, he definitely had Highland cattle but they may have been in the field near Chorlton Station or perhaps even in both locations.

He also had a peacock with a couple of peahens and for a period Hough End was nicknamed Peacock farm because of the noise they made and because the peacock used to fly across Nell Lane into the park so lots of people saw it. 

There was a deep depression in the field near the rear left hand corner of the plot of the Hall itself and it was made a by a bomb which dropped there during the second world war, certainly it was known as bomb crater corner. 

According to family history the blast knocked my father over – he was an ARP Warden during the war so could have been out at night on fire watch.

During the war there was a riding school at Hough End, a Mc somebody – a search through a trade directory might find him - and my sisters learnt to ride horses at that time. The horses were kept in the loose boxes in the long building parallel to Mauldeth Road."

All that is left is for me to thank Oliver and his family for taking the trouble to recall the old hall and just hope it provokes more memories.

© Oliver Bailey, 2014

Picture; Hough End Hall from Nell Lane, T Baddeley, 1952, m47852, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Plan; © Oliver Bailey, 2014

*John Booker, A History of the Chapels of Didsbury & Chorlton, 1857, Cheetham Chetham Society Manchester

Hough End Hall in the 1950s

Now the thing about very old buildings is that usually we focus on that very old bit.

So it is with Hough End Hall built in 1596 and for a big chunk of its history the family home of the Mosley family.

Most of the accounts of the place concentrate on its Elizabethan design and the Mosley family and ignore the last two hundred years when it was a farm house and later still an office and restaurant.

But I am more interested in its time as the home of tenant farmers during the 19th century and then its uncertain time from the 1920s when it was under threat of demolition by road widening plans.

Today there is nothing much left and so I have decided to call on the memory of Oliver Bailey whose father took possession of the Hall and surrounding land at the beginning of the Second World War and worked it in conjunction with his farm at Park Brow.

Here and over the next few weeks are short accounts of what was once three and which I hope will set off more memories from other people.

"Looking at the front of the hall on the right hand side I remember a man called John Hallsworth had a blacksmith shop in the 1950s. 

He had been an iron worker with British Road Services and rented the smithy at Hough End from my father after he retired from BRS.

There was a wooden staircase up the wall of the hall inside the smithy itself. He he made a couple of gates for Park Brow Farm. 

Sam & Jack Priday, who were farriers with a smithy in Withington,  came round and used the forge to shoe my father’s Suffolk Punch horse. 

I remember walking beside him as he used a horse drawn single furrow plough in the field next to Mauldeth Roadd, probably late 1940s. 

At the rear right hand end there were various add-on outbuildings at the back, probably nineteenth century. 

One was a cottage and another a store of some sort that had fallen into disrepair .

The left wing of the Hall suffered severe structural damage which was perhaps caused by subsidence and had to be rebuilt in the 1950s by the Egerton Estate and I remember they used artificial stone lintels and cills for the mullioned windows. 

On the upper floor there was an old mangle that was basically a large box full of cobbles that rolled back and forth on rollers on the wooden base when it was worked by turning the handle.

 I think that ended up in Ordsall Hall, definitely went to Salford as Manchester had no interest."

© Oliver Bailey, June 2014

Pictures; Hough End Hall, 1952, m47850,the hall from the south east, 1952 m 47856 and the hall and duck pond, 1952, all by T Baddeley, m47859, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Next, a plan a riding school and the man who kept rabbits

On being ten and the magic of that pond at Hough End Hall in the summer of 1953

Now if you were ten on a slow Sunday in August you might have been tempted by the pond at Hough End Hall.

There are some now in their sixties and older who will privately confess it was on their to do list along with a bit of scrumming and sneaking in without paying at the old Palais de Luxe cinema.

Nor were they along for a young Oliver Bailey whose parents were tenants of the Hall and later bought it  remembers that while the pond was not deep it was perfect for testing out the steam driven model boats he and his brother made.

All of which fits nicely with Peter’s painting which is one of a series based on original photographs of the hall in the late 19th and 20th centuries.

And just as I was finishing the story I had a conversation with my old friend Faith who also remembered the hall during the 1950s, and of equally adventurous days playing by the Bumps which was that stretch of land running east alongside the Brook behind the Hall.

Part of the adventure involved riding a bike along the bank and trying not to fall in.

In time perhaps Peter could paint that scene although Faith tells me that the area is now fenced off.

Well perhaps that is just the challenge Peter needs to recreate an adventure.

Painting; Hough End Hall circa 1953,  ©2014 Peter Topping Paintings from Pictures
Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk
facebook: www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

Sneaking into Hough End Hall looking for ghosts and staircases in 1959

 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

Remembering Hough End Hall part two

Hough End Hall continues to be a puzzle.  

The Hall in 1924

Given that it has stood on the edge of Chorlton since 1596 there is very little about the place other than photographs of the exterior and some anecdotal evidence dating from the mid 20th century.

To my knowledge the only floor plan of the place from before the 1960s was that made by the Egerton Estate in 1938.

And for reasons I do not understand it cannot be copied or photographed.
It sits with much older documents from the Egerton Papers in the Archive at Central Ref, some dating back to the 18th century and all available to be reproduced.

One day I will find out why.  But for now I have had to turn to my old friend Oliver whose family had taken possession of the hall and the surrounding buildings and land at the outbreak of the Second World War.

The Hall in 1945 with one of the Bailey horses

I asked him to describe the hall as he remembered it during the 1950s and it is both a fascinating record of the place and an invaluable piece of its history.

It includes a plan of the hall and outlying buildings, along with what will be the most detailed account I have come across of the place before it was taken over by developers.

“Along the side of the plot that borders Mauldeth Rd 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. 

Later on there was a pair of Russian Wolfhounds Michael and Heather and after they went, two Irish wolfhounds Terry and Fergus that later moved to Park Brow Farm

At the far end of the same building (nearer the Hall) in one of the lofts a man called Jimmy Ryan bred rabbits for show as a hobby; he worked at MetroVick as a day job and later joined Boeing in the US. 
At the other end – nearer Nell Lane – one of the corner stones was inscribed with the bar and arrow as an Ordnance Survey Bench Mark

On the corner of Nell Lane and Mauldeth Rd there was an L-shaped building and on the lower level my father kept pigs and on the upper level he had about 200 deep litter hens. 

The Hall in 1954

When there were no pigs it created a severe problem of frost as the pipes kept freezing up in winter and one of my jobs was to use a blowlamp to thaw them out and fix the occasional burst so the hens could drink 

Another problem was that from time to time the pigs got out and it was not a great deal of fun rounding them up. 

It was in that same yard we finally captured the St Kilda ram that had led us and the police a merry dance from the field near Chorlton Station, along Wilbraham Rd and St Werburgh’s Rd and we cornered it in a pen we put together from the show jumps from Didsbury Show that were stored there. 

A treasured memory of that morning was me on a bike following a police van with a policeman leaning out of the door trying to lasso the errant ram we were both chasing. 

According to one policeman a colleague thought he had it cornered in an alley near the old telephone exchange but it butted him in the chest then trotted away – he was laughing like hell when he told the story but I never knew if he was winding me up.”

© Oliver Bailey, 2014

Pictures; the Hall in 1924 from a watercolour by E A Phipson m80206, the hall from the south east, 1945 T Baddeley, m47846, and in 1952, T Baddeley m47851, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Next, a bomb and a riding school