OFFERTON HALL.
By S. O. Addy, M.A.
The hamlet of Offerton is near Hathersage, and now consists of three houses, called Offerton Hall, Offerton House, and Offerton Cottage. It stands high, but the moors on the south rise higher still, and partly hide the rays of the midday sun from these buildings. So, as you walk up the hill on a summer’s morning, the gateway of the hall, already darkened by time, is further darkened by shadows. But there is plenty of light when you get into the courtyard.
You ascend a little-used, narrow lane, with walls on either side, and leaving Offerton House, itself a quaint old building, on your right, you presently enter the courtyard of Offerton Hall through a tall gateway, which stands between farm buildings on one side and a barn on the other. Within the archway on either side are mullioned windows, and just beyond the archway is a door, as if a porter once kept the gate.
Offerton Hall (Front View).
Offerton Hall (Back View).
Open the barn doors and peep inside. At one end, raised high above the floor, you will see a large wooden platform, which can be raised up and down at will, and is used for clipping sheep. You will also notice that the great oak beams or rafters which support the roof of the barn extend down to the ground. These beams are thick and rude, and have hardly been touched by the carpenter’s tools. They are locally known as “crucks,” which is an older form of “crutches.” A book which has just been published contains an extract from a lease dated 1432, in which “crukkes” are mentioned, and it is remarkable that the word is used as a translation of laquearia.[59] The barn at Offerton Hall consists of four bays, measuring 15 feet by 16 feet each, so that the floor of each contains 240 square feet. Some of the crutches are bigger and heavier than the others, and they all rest on stone pedestals, varying, according to the size of the crutches, from two to four feet from the ground, the crutches which stand on the two lowest pedestals being the thickest. All the crutches have mortise holes for rafters on their outer faces about a foot above the lowest of the two tie-beams by which they are joined together. This shows that the roof of the barn, or the roof of an earlier building which the crutches once supported, sloped from the ridge to the ground. The tie-beams are held in their places by tree-nails or wooden pegs.
As I have shown elsewhere, the bay was a unit of measurement, containing 240 square feet. The evidence supporting this conclusion may be seen in various ancient documents. For instance, in the twelfth century, the villans of Aucklandshire had to “make the bishop’s hall in the forest, of the length of 60 feet, and of the breadth within the posts (infra postes) of sixteen feet.”[60] In other words, the hall was to consist of four bays of 240 square feet each, like those in the barn at Offerton. In 1694 there was a fire at Long Eaton, near Derby, which “consumed fourteen dwelling houses, togeather with the barnes, stables, outhouses, and other buildings, containeinge ninety bayes of buildings.”[61] Here the houses of a village are estimated by the bay, which must have been a recognised measure of quantity. It appears in the Eckington Court Rolls that in 1758 a man borrowed £40 on the security of “all that one bay of a barn, situate and being in the High Lane, called the Farr Bay, and all that close there called the Farr Over Close adjoining to the High Lane aforesaid southwards, containing by estimation three acres.” In 1764 an Eckington man and his wife surrendered “all that middle bay of a barn situate and being at High Lane aforesaid, together with twelve yards and two feet of land in length on the north side of the said barn, and one yard in breadth, with all the priveledges and appurtenances to the same belonging,” to the use of John Gill, of Cuckhold’s Haven, in the parish of Eckington, sicklesmith. The meaning is that bays, being measures of quantity, were sold like acres, or, rather, like links of sausages. We must not, of course, suppose that all bays were exactly of the same size, or that each of them contained an area of exactly 240 square feet. We might as well expect every acre in the fields to contain exactly 4,840 square yards.
In examining the outside of Offerton Hall, the first thing to be noticed is a small projection from the back or western side. It is a quadrangular tower, and contains the stairs which supply the two upper floors of the building. As will be imagined from the outer appearance, the stairs are not spiral, but go in short, straight flights, with proper landings. The steps are of stone; first, six steps and then a landing; in nine more steps you get to the first floor; after this, six steps and a landing, then, the uppermost floor or garret. The staircase is really a detached room, and you can only get into it by opening a door. Taking the word in its etymological meaning, a staircase is a “case” which holds a “stair” or ladder. In some old Lincolnshire houses the “stair” is in fact a ladder inside a little closet, like a voting compartment, in a corner of one of the rooms. At Garner House, about a mile from Offerton, the winding stair, now of wood, but formerly of stone, is in a round turret at the back of the house; half of the turret is visible outside, the other half is concealed in the wall.
Offerton Hall is one of those buildings which have escaped the practical joke of “restoration.” It consists of a “house-place” or large central room, with a projecting wing on either side—a form which was very common in the seventeenth century. In the angle formed by the “house-place” and the southern wing is a yellow-washed stone porch, about two feet deep. Just above the entrance to the porch is a tiny window, with diamond panes and angular top. Below, in an incised panel, the letters M.G. are carved, and, just beneath those letters, R.G. 1658. Although the plan of the house is consistent throughout, it was not all built at the same time, and the two pairs of initials may represent two different owners or builders. Ralph Glossop, of Offerton, appears in the Hope Easter Roll for this very year 1658, and also Edward Glossop, of the same place.[62] A list of the freeholders of Derbyshire made in 1633[63] shows that Ralph Glossop was the only freeholder at Offerton in that year. According to Hunter’s large Pedigree Book, printed by the Harleian Society, Ralph Glossop, of Offerton, married Elizabeth, daughter of Dr. Jeremy Ward, of Ashop, in Derbyshire.[64] This Ralph Glossop is not, like his neighbour Thomas Eyre, of Highlow, described in the list of freeholders as an esquire, and accordingly Offerton Hall would seem to have been the residence of a substantial yeoman.
Opening out of the little porch is a strong oak door, studded with iron nails. The height of the door is five feet eight inches, and it is below the level of the sill or threshold, so that when you enter the house you go down one step. As you enter you must take care both of your head and your feet, or you may come to grief at both ends. Dr. Troels Lund says that in Danish houses of the sixteenth century “the door was extremely low, so that a person entering had to bend down, and at the same time the sill was so high that the foot had to be well lifted up. And if a man had reason to fear a hostile attack, it was a considerable help that the entrance, which was always a weak point, should be as narrow and low as possible; if the door were burst open, the enemy might get his death-blow as he stepped over the sill with his back bent and his foot lifted up.”[65]
At Offerton Hall, instead of lifting your leg up you have to drop it down, and at the same time if you are a tall man you have to bend your neck. In the English, as in the Danish case, the intention was to make entrance difficult, and to prevent surprises. The thick oak door opens inwardly. As you go in you do not see the house-place; you face the great chimney wall, and to get into the house-place you pass through another door on your right. Thus the house contains both an inner and an outer porch, the inner porch answering to the “speer” of Lancashire cottages which have no outer porch. The door of entrance is fastened by an oak bolt one foot nine inches in length, and three inches by four in thickness. The bolt fits into a hole in the wall, and is drawn out by an iron ring.
The house-place, or “house-body” as they call it at Halifax, is still the centre of domestic intercourse, as it has always been. As you enter, your back is turned to the great fireplace which once warmed all the house, and which was kept burning day and night. When you get inside the house-place the great vault of the chimney, more than eleven feet wide, is before you, spanned by a depressed arch. People in the neighbourhood speak of the chimney of Offerton Hall as “a lantern chimney.” If you ask them why it was so called, somebody may tell you, without blushing, that it was because a man went up to sweep it with a lantern. The term “lantern chimney” is not to be found in dictionaries, and may therefore be presumed to be unknown. There must once have been a louver or lantern at the top of the chimney at Offerton, like the one, for instance, at Tisbury, in Wiltshire, figured in Parker’s Glossary. The chimney at Tisbury is octangular, with a conical roof, like the top of a stable lantern, and with lateral holes for the emission of smoke. The summit of the chimney at Offerton may originally have been of this form.
The base of the chimney has a breadth of twelve feet six inches on one side, and ten feet six inches on the other. It is built of stone, and in the chamber above the house-place it begins to taper off, so that its sides might be compared to the “steps” on the Great Pyramid. Big central chimneys like this are the first rude attempts to get rid of the open hearth, from which the smoke escaped by a hole in the roof, or by a louver. It is said that “chimneys were not used in the farmhouses of Cheshire till within forty years of the publication of King’s Vale Royal (1636); the fire was in the midst of the house, against a hob of clay, and the oxen lived under the same roof.”[66]
The rooms of the house are about eight feet high on the ground floor, and seven feet on the upper floor, and the principals supporting the roof in the garret are a good deal like the crutches which have just been described. There is no panelling in the house, and no cellar. In front of the building is an old-fashioned garden.
In 1545 Robert Glossop, of Offerton, was fined for trespassing on Abney Common.[67] In 1465 John Glossop, of Wodsetys, in Norton (Norton Woodseats, near Sheffield), leased to Henry Foliaumbe a messuage in Offerton called Le Storthe for twelve years.[68] It would not be difficult to make out a considerable history of the Glossop family and their relations from the Lichfield wills and the other usual sources of information.
We must not be in too great a hurry to conclude that Offerton means upper farm, as Over Haddon means Upper Haddon. Overton, in Ashover, means upper farm, but Mr. Jeayes has shown that in the thirteenth century Offerton, in Hathersage, occurs once as Hofnertoun, and that a man called Eustace de Hofnerton lived there.[69] Other early forms of the name are Offirtun and Offreton; in Domesday it appears as Offertune, a berewick of Hope. Mr. Searle has told us that Offerd is found in Old English charters and in Domesday as a form of the man’s name Osfrith,[70] and, if we could put aside Hofnertoun as a scribe’s error, this is probably the first element of the word. In the thirteenth century we have Over Offerton and Nether Offerton, otherwise Kauereshegge.[71] Was Nether Offerton ever so called? Possibly the scribe should have written Hauereshegge, a form of Hathersage, as old documents show.
The Offerton Hall estate is the property of H. Cunliffe Shawe, Esq., of Weddington Hall, Nuneaton, to whom it has descended from Robert Newton, Esq., of Norton House, who was born in 1713 and died in 1789. Mr. Newton was a wealthy man and a great purchaser of land, this being one of his many estates. In a survey belonging to Mr. Shawe, made about eighty years ago, the Offerton Hall property is described as containing eighty-five acres, and as including the following fields: The Acre with Kentny Barn, Great Kentny, Kentny Meadow, Kentny Wood, Breedy Acre with the Precipice, Wild Hey, Siss Acres, Cornhill Cap Meadow, and Great White Ley. As the map shows, Kentny Meadow is close to the hall. A place called Kenteney, in Upper Offerton, is mentioned in deeds of the thirteenth century.[72] This name represents an older Centan-īg, meaning Centa’s “island,” and we have the same termination ey (īg or īeg) in Abney, which adjoins Offerton, and in a manuscript survey of 1451 is written Albeney.[73] We can rely upon this form of the name, not only because it was taken from an older survey, but because the surname De Albeney occurs in North Derbyshire in 1250.[74] Now the surname Albeyn is found at Chesterfield in 1339,[75] and is the English form of the Latin Albāgnus. Abney, therefore, means Alban’s “island.” Eyam, which adjoins, is written Eium or Eyum in the thirteenth century, and the termination -um is so very frequent that we cannot doubt that it is a dative plural, and that the word means “islands.” These “islands,” it need hardly be said, were not pieces of land surrounded by water. They remind us of the intermixed townships which are so frequent in some parts of England, as if strangers or conquerors had settled amongst a conquered people. At Eyam, the “islands” seem to have been the lands which were held by military tenure, or “hastler lands,” as they were known in the neighbourhood.
Siss Acres may be six acres, for Chaucer has sis for six. If so, the word is interesting as pointing to French influence in the neighbourhood.
In 1611 it is said that Offerton is a manor of itself, then in the tenure of Henry Cavendish, Esq.[76]