Lancashire: Brief Historical and Descriptive Notes

by Leo H. Grindon

Speke suggests the idea of botanical metamorphosis even more powerfully than Smithills. At each place the ancient occupiers, full of the native spirit of "never say die," the oak, the hawthorn, and the silver birch,—trees that decked the soil in the days of Caractacus,—wonder who are these new-comers, the rhododendrons and the strange conifers from Japan and the antipodes. They bid them welcome all the same. As at Clitheroe, they stand arm in arm; we are reminded at every step of the good householder "which bringeth forth out of his treasure things both new and old."

Hall i' th' Wood, not far off, so called because once hidden in the heart of a forest containing wild boars, stands on the brow of a precipitous cliff at the base of which flows the Eagley. Possessed of a large bay window, Hall i' th' Wood may justly be pronounced one of the best existing specimens of old English domestic architecture—that of the franklins, or aboriginal country gentlemen, not only of Lancashire, but of the soil in general, though some of the external ornaments are of later date than the house itself. The oldest part seems never to have suffered "improvements" of any kind; in any case, Hall i' th' Wood is to the historian one of the most interesting spots in England, since it was here, in the room with the remarkable twenty-four-light window, that Crompton devised and constructed his cotton-machine. The noble old trees have long since vanished. When the oaks were put to death, so large were they that no cross-cut saw long enough for the purpose could be procured, and the workmen were obliged to begin with making deep incisions in the trunks, and removing large masses of the ironlike timber. This was only a trifle more than a century ago.

Turton Tower, near Bolton, an old turreted and embattled building, partly stone, partly black-and-white, the latter portion gabled, originally belonged to the Orrells, afterwards to the Chethams, the most distinguished of whom, Humphrey Chetham, founder of the Chetham Free Library, died here in 1653. The upper storeys, there being four in all, successively project or overhang, after the manner of those of many of the primitive Manchester houses. The square form of the building gives it an aspect of great solidity; the ancient door is oak, and passing this, we come once again upon abundance of elaborate wood-carving, with enriched ceilings, as at Speke. Turton has, in part, been restored, but with strict regard to the original style and fashion, both within and without.

The neighbourhood also of Wigan is celebrated for its old halls, pre-eminent among which is Ince, the ancient seat of the Gerards, and the subject of another of our sketches. Ince stands about a mile to the south-east of the comparatively modern building of the same name, and in its many gables surmounting the front, and long ranges of windows, is not more tasteful as a work of art than conspicuous to the traveller who is so fortunate as to pass near enough to enjoy the sight of it. Lostock Old Hall, black-and-white, and dated 1563, possesses a handsome stone gateway, and has most of the rooms wainscoted. Standish Hall, three and a half miles N.N.W., is also well worth a visit; and after these time is well given to Pemberton Old Hall, half timbered (two miles W.S.W.), Birchley Hall, Winstanley Hall, and Haigh Hall. Winstanley, built of stone, though partly modernised, retains the ancient transom windows, opposing a quiet and successful resistance to the ravages of time and fashion. Haigh Hall, for many ages the seat of the Bradshaigh family (from which, through females, Lord Lindsay, the distinguished Lancashire author and art-critic, descended), is a stately mansion of various periods—the chapel as old apparently as the reign of Edward II. Placed upon the brow of the hill above the town, it commands a prospect scarcely surpassed by the view from Billinge.

HALL IN THE WOOD

The old halls of Manchester and the immediate neighbourhood would a hundred years ago have required many chapters to themselves. It has already been mentioned that a great portion of the original town was "black-and-white," and most of the halls belonging to the local gentry, it would seem, were similar. Those which stood in the way of the fast-striding bricks and mortar of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, if not gone entirely, have been mutilated beyond recognition. In the fields close to Garratt Hall partridges were shot only seventy or eighty years ago: to-day there is scarcely a fragment of it left! Hulme Hall, which stood upon a rise of the red sandstone rock close to the Irwell, overlooking the ancient ford to Ordsall,—once the seat of the loyal and generous Prestwich family,—is remembered by plenty of the living as the point aimed for in summer evenings by those who loved the sight of hedges covered with the white bells of the convolvulus—Galatea's own pretty flower. Workshops now cover the ground; and though Ordsall Hall, its neighbour across the water, not long ago a mile from any public road, is still extant, it is hall only in name. Ordsall, happily, is in the possession of a firm of wealthy manufacturers, who have converted the available portions into a sort of institute for their workpeople.[44] Crumpsall Old Hall; Hough Hall, near Moston; Ancoats Old Hall, now the Ancoats Art Gallery; Barton Old Hall, near Eccles; Urmston Old Hall, and several others, may be named as examples of ancient beauty and dignity now given over to the spirit of change. Leaving them to their destiny, it is pleasant to note one here and there among the fields still unspoiled, as in the case of "Hough End," a building of modest proportions, but an excellent example of the style in brick which prevailed at the close of the reign of Elizabeth; the windows square-headed, with substantial stone mullions, and transomed. Hough End was originally the home of the Mosleys, having been erected by Sir Nicholas Mosley, Lord Mayor of London in 1600, "whom God," says the old biographer, "from a small and low estate, raysed up to riches and honour." One of the prettiest of the always pretty "magpie" style is Kersall Cell, near the banks of the Irwell, at Agecroft, so named because on the site of an ancient monkish retreat or hermitage, the predecessor of which in turn was a little oratory among the rocks at Ordsall, lower down the stream, founded temp. Henry II. Worsley Old Hall, another example of "magpie," though less known to the general public than the adjacent modern Worsley Hall, the seat of the Earl of Ellesmere, is one of the most imposing edifices of its character in South Lancashire. With the exception of Worsley Hall, Manchester possesses no princely or really patrician residences. The Earl of Wilton's, Heaton Park, though well placed, claims to be nothing more than of the classical type so common to its class.

When relics only exist, they in many cases become specially interesting through containing some personal memorial. Barlow Hall, for instance, originally black-and-white, with quadrangle, now so changed by modernising and additions that we have only a hint of the primitive aspect, is rich in the possession of an oriel with stained glass devoted to heraldry. One of the shields—parted per pale, apparently to provide a place for the Barlow arms, not inserted—shows on the dexter side those of Edward Stanley, third Earl of Derby, in seventeen quarterings—Stanley, Lathom, the Isle of Man, Harrington, Whalley Abbey, Hooton, and eleven others. The date of this, as of the sundial, is 1574.

The country immediately around Liverpool is deficient in old halls of the kind so abundant near Bolton and Manchester. This perhaps is in no degree surprising when we consider how thinly that part of Lancashire was inhabited when the manufacturing south-east corner was already populous. Speke is the only perfect example thereabouts of its particular class, the black-and-white; and of a first-class contemporaneous baronial mansion, the remains of the Hutte, near Hale, furnish an almost solitary memorial. The transom of the lower window, the upper smaller windows, the stack of kitchen chimneys, the antique mantelpiece, the moat, still untouched, with its drawbridge, combine to show how important this place must have been in the bygones, while the residence of the Irelands. It was quitted in 1674, when the comparatively new "Hale Hall" was erected, a solid and commodious building of the indefinite style. Liverpool as a district is correspondingly deficient in palatial modern residences, though there are many of considerable magnitude. Knowsley, the seat of the Earl of Derby, is eminently miscellaneous, a mixture of Gothic and classical, and of various periods, beginning with temp. Henry VI. The front was built in 1702, the back in 1805. Croxteth Hall, the Earl of Sefton's, is a stone building of the negative character indicative of the time of Queen Anne and George I. Childwall Abbey, a mansion belonging to the Marquis of Salisbury, is Gothic of the kind which is recommended neither by taste nor by fidelity to exact principles. Lathom, on the other hand, is consistent, though opinions vary as to the amount of genius displayed in the detail—the very part in which genius is always declared. Would that there existed, were it ever so tiny, a fragment of the original Lathom House, that noble first home of the Stanleys, which had no fewer than eighteen towers, without reckoning the lofty "Eagle" in the centre—its outer walls protected by a fosse of eight yards in width, and its gateway one that in nobleness would satisfy kings. Henry VII. came here in 1495, the occasion when "to the women that songe before the Kinge and the Quene," as appears in the entertaining Privy Purse Expenses of the royal progress that pleasant summer, there was given "in reward, 6s. 8d." So thorough was the demolition of the old place that now there is no certain knowledge even of the site. The present mansion was built during the ten years succeeding 1724. It has a rustic basement, with double flight of steps, above which are rows of Ionic columns. The length of the northern or principal front, including the wings, is 320 feet; the south front overlooks the garden, and an abundantly wooded park. An Italian architect, Giacomo Leoni, was entrusted with the decoration of the interior, which upon the whole is deservedly admired.

Ince Blundell is distinguished, not so much for its architecture, as for the collection of works of art contained in the entrance-hall, a model, one-third size, of the Pantheon. The sculptures, of various kinds, above 550 in number, are chiefly illustrative of the later period of Roman art, though including some gems of ancient Greek conception; the paintings include works of high repute in all the principal continental schools, as well as English, the former representing, among others, Paul Veronese, Andrea del Sarto, and Jan Van Eyck. The Ince Blundell collection is certainly without equal in Lancashire, and is pronounced by connoisseurs one of the finest of its kind in the country.