And merrily speeds the glad wassail.
The hall was proverbially the place of festivity, and many a scene of jocund mirth and roystering revelry, unrestrained by the laws which modern civilisation imposes, has, doubtless, here been witnessed, as the nut-brown ale, the mead and the sack, the Malmsey, and the Rhenish, the mazer-bowl, and the highly-spiced claret cup passed from hand to hand, and the “top beam of the hall” was enthusiastically toasted as symbolising the health of the lordly owner, whose armorial ensigns occupied that elevated position, for
Merry swith it is in halle
When the berdes waveth alle.
On the north side of the hall, near what was the “high-place,” a doorway communicates with the dining-room and some of the principal apartments, and also with the staircase leading to the drawing-room and the corridor which extends the entire length of the south front; but these parts of the mansion have been greatly modernised, and, with the exception of the dining and drawing rooms, remodelled by Charles Legh about the middle of last century, and in each of which are some exquisite carvings, said to be by Grinling Gibbons,[40] but more probably the work of Sephton, which well deserve examination, do not call for any special description.
In 1846 a large portion of the contents of Adlington, including many family portraits by Vandyke, Lely, and Kneller; books, manuscripts, and curiosities, were sold by auction. Some of the books and manuscripts are now in the Chetham Library, and others were purchased for the Portico in Manchester. Fortunately many of the family portraits have since been recovered and restored to their original positions, among them being the one of Sir Urian Legh already referred to, and a large-sized picture in the dining-room by Cornelius Janssens; a full length of Thomas Legh, the Royalist soldier, and his wife Mary, daughter of Thomas Bolles.
Apart from its memories, its traditions, and its associations as the home of an ancient Cheshire stock, Adlington possesses a deep interest as an example of old English domestic architecture. Whilst retaining many of the more striking and important of its ancient features comparatively unimpaired, it marks the growth and development of human society, and expresses the needs and ideas of changeful centuries, the varied and somewhat rude magnificence of the Tudor and Stuart periods and the classic forms of the earlier Georgian era mingling in curious contrast, and carrying the mind rapidly through a long series of years. Happily, within the present century the house has been subjected to but little change or innovation, and has escaped, in a great degree, the evil influences of “renovators” and “improvers.” It is one of the comparatively few old places that have remained to the descendants of the ancient worthies by whom they were erected, and we may venture to indulge the hope that as it has endured for centuries past, so for centuries to come it may be preserved a genuine relic of mediæval England—a monument and a memorial of what men call “the good old times.”
