The Hall, which is located in the township of Tonge, and distant about a couple of miles from Bolton, is an interesting specimen of the old English mansion of the earlier Tudor period; and, though time has made sad havoc among its beauties and peculiarities, it has happily escaped the assaults of “improvers,” and even in its dilapidated and forlorn condition may, in an antiquarian sense, be said to retain its original features comparatively unimpaired. It stands near the edge of a bold rocky steep that rises abruptly from the Eagley Brook—a tributary of the Irwell, that separates the townships of Sharples and Tonge—and commands an extensive view of the surrounding country. It is an irregular pile—a house with many gables—and has evidently been erected at two distinct periods—the older part being in the black and white half-timbered style so frequently met with in the old manor houses of Lancashire and Cheshire; while the more modern portion, though also boasting considerable antiquity, is of stone, with a two-storeyed projecting porch of the same material, erected in 1648, as the date with the initials
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over the doorway clearly indicates. The mansion does not, however, appear ever to have made any great pretensions to stateliness, though its possessors were a family boasting considerable ancestral dignity, and one of them, in his pride of lineage, placed his heraldic achievements in an elaborately ornamented panel in one of the rooms, in order that his friends might note his honourable descent. The earliest portion is said, with some show of authority, to date as far back as the year 1483. For some time it was owned by the Brownlows; and over the fireplace in one of the rooms may still be seen the initials of Lawrence Brownlow, with the date 1591, and it is said that an ancient oak bedstead which was removed many years ago from Hall-i’-th’-Wood to Huntroyde has the same initials carved upon it. This part of the house, as we have said, is of timber and plaster, or “post and petrel,” as it is locally designated; the walls being composed of a framework of massive timber, with the interstices filled with plaster, and worked in divers quatrefoil and diaper-like patterns. The main structure comprises a long and lofty oblong block, with a short bay projecting at right angles from the further end. The upper chambers overhang the lower, and these again have an overhanging roof springing from a coved cornice; another instance that the mediæval architects who planned and carried out these erections were by no means insensible to the advantage of a varied outline producing that picturesque irregularity which, without any unnecessary sacrifice of domestic comfort, is so favourable to external beauty, as well as to the effect produced by a judicious combination of light and shade—a style infinitely preferable to the dull, dreary uniformities of brick put up in the present day, and which, were it only revived in its original beauty, would enable us to dispense with those Italian forms that were only introduced to satisfy the craving for foreign importations.
Time wrought changes; with the increase of refinement came the necessity for increased accommodation, when, to give additional elbow-room and keep pace with the requirements of the age, the old house, instead of being demolished, as would be the case now-a-days, was added to, a more pretentious structure of stone, with mullioned windows and parapets with ball ornaments, being joined up to it, and from this portion the square porch, which exhibits the same architectural features, projects. The date and the initials show that it was erected by Alexander Norris, son and heir of Christopher Norris, of Tonge-with-Haulgh, whose daughter and heiress, Alice, in 1654, conveyed the place in marriage to John Starkie, of Huntroyde; their descendant in the sixth generation, Le Gendre Nicholas Starkie, of Huntroyde, Esq., being the present possessor. John Starkie must have been an old man when he married, for his death occurred eleven years later at the age of 77, when Alice Starkie, his widow, returned to Hall-i’-th’-Wood and spent the remainder of her days there, amid the scenes of her childhood.
After the death of Mrs. Starkie the mansion seems to have remained unoccupied, and subsequently to have been divided into small tenements and let to humble occupants, who attached small import either to its antiquity or the associations connected with it, content if only they could keep the roof over their heads; and, as may be anticipated, during those vicissitudes, it was suffered to fall into a state of decay, until the inroads of dilapidation became only too painfully visible both within and without.
STAIRCASE: HALL-I’-TH’-WOOD.