An autumn walk round Rivington Gardens

After all the grey, damp and drizzly weather we had locally during October and early this month we recently had a couple of really nice sunny days so one morning I took the dogs for a walk round Rivington Terraced Gardens, somewhere I hadn’t been to for quite a while.

In 1899 local soap magnate William Hesketh Lever (Lord Leverhulme), founder of Lever Brothers (now Unilever) and one of Bolton’s most famous and generous benefactors, bought a large parcel of land below Rivington Pike on the western slopes of Winter Hill with ideas on how it might be developed, and in 1901 a single storey prefabricated timber bungalow supplied by a firm in Manchester was erected on a level section of the hillside. Named Roynton Cottage it was designed by Lever’s old school friend Jonathan Simpson and was intended for weekend visits and shooting parties.

Four years later Lever met landscape architect Thomas Mawson and the two collaborated in the design of the terraced gardens though Lever himself influenced the actual layout and also designed Lever Bridge which crossed the main lane through the gardens. With one large arch crossed by six smaller ones it was based on a bridge Lever had seen during a trip to Nigeria and is now known locally as Seven Arch Bridge. Work on the gardens spanned a 16-year period from 1906 and in 1921 the landscape and architectural firm of James Pulham & Son were responsible for the creation of a steep rocky ravine with waterfalls and a Japanese-style garden with three pagodas, inspired by a visit Lever had made to Japan several years earlier.

In 1913 the bungalow was destroyed in an arson attack by suffragette Edith Rigby. The stone-built replacement was on a much grander scale and was a place for entertaining; along with a dining room, morning room, lounge, library, study, kitchen and servants’ quarters it also incorporated a music gallery, a circular ballroom, glass-roofed pergola and a winter garden. Following Lever’s death in 1925 the house and gardens were purchased by Bolton brewer John Magee then after his death in 1939 the site was acquired by Liverpool Corporation; in 1948 the bungalow and its entrance lodges were demolished and the gardens were opened up to the public. Following local government reorganisation in 1974 the site passed to the North West Water Authority and along with much of the surrounding land is now owned by United Utilities.

After decades of nature being allowed to take its course the gardens gradually became overgrown in many places and in 2014 the site was named by the BBC Countryfile programme as one of Britain’s Best Lost Gardens. In early 2016 the Rivington Heritage Trust secured £3.4million from the Heritage Lottery fund to improve, revitalise and maintain the gardens and their features and a huge repair and conservation project was soon undertaken. With non-native shrubs and self-seeded trees being cleared away, remaining stone buildings being made safe and accessible, and several original paths and stone stairways being uncovered the gardens eventually began to look how they once might have been. When I last went up there three years ago conservation work was very much ongoing, now it seems to have finished and as I walked round the gardens it was a delight to discover features I hadn’t known existed or which had previously been inaccessible.

From the car park to the gardens

View from the path

View along the Seven Arch Bridge

A recently uncovered stone stairway and arches

Overlooking the Italian Lake

Originally called the Dovecote Tower, the Grade II listed Pigeon Tower as it’s now known was built in 1910 by R Atkinson to a design by Thomas Mawson, commissioned by Lever as a gift to his wife, Elizabeth Ellen. A 4-storey building with a basement entrance, each storey was just one single room with the floors linked by a solid stone spiral staircase running up the spine of the building. The first and second floors housed ornamental doves and pigeons while the top floor was Lady Lever’s sewing room/music room. Above the ornate fireplace was the family motto and a circular emblem with the letters spelling out ‘WHEEL’, the initials of William Hesketh and Elizabeth Ellen Lever.

As part of the recent conservation project the Pigeon Tower has been sympathetically restored and with a new roof and windows, repairs to the stonework, new flooring and an aesthetically-pleasing security door with oak wood surround the building is now completely safe and open to visitors during special events and Open Days, although any doves and pigeons have long since disappeared. Situated on the highest level of the terraced gardens the nearby lane has far reaching views westwards across the Lancashire Plains to the coast and northwards to the hills of the south Lake District, while North Wales can be seen from the top of the tower itself.

The Pigeon Tower

The site of the bungalow

The tennis lawn and summer house

Overlooking the Japanese Lake

It was just after I’d walked round the Japanese Lake that an unfortunate incident occurred. Steps took me down a steep bank from one end of the lake to the path below and as I walked up the path, and right out of the blue, a big dog came running down the bank, fell off the retaining wall, picked itself up and immediately attacked Snowy and Poppie. I’m not sure if it had seen my two from the bank and decided to attack or if it was just running along the bank and went too fast to stop before it fell off the wall but it landed almost at the side of me and so suddenly I had no time to react.

Poppie ran behind me but Snowy had a go back though it was much bigger than her and things almost developed into a full-on fight; although it wasn’t actually a pit bull it looked very much like that type of dog and I really thought Snowy was going to get hurt. There was no sign of the owners but they couldn’t have been far away so I just yelled as loud as I could for someone to call the dog then I heard a man’s voice calling it from the other side of the bank and telling someone to put it on the lead. Fortunately it ran back up the bank and I didn’t see it again, or its owners whoever they were. The whole incident only lasted a minute or two but to be attacked so suddenly like that really shook me up – thankfully Snowy was okay but it won’t have helped her dislike of other dogs.

After the dog incident the rest of the walk was fine and as I headed down the long path back towards the car park I was happy to see a squirrel running along some nearby tree branches and a robin which landed in the grass not too far away. It seemed happy to stay put while I took a couple of photos then it flew up onto a nearby fence post and posed for another quick shot before flying off into the trees.

Apart from the incident with the dog it was a very enjoyable walk and it had been good to discover parts of the terraced gardens which I hadn’t previously seen or known about. It’s a very extensive place and I know there are other paths which I haven’t yet explored so maybe next spring, once the trees get their new leaves, the three of us will go back to see what else we can find.

A discovery walk and some local history

My Monday walk this week is another local one which I did just two days ago after coming across some local history on the internet which led me to following a path I’d never taken before, which in turn prompted me to research more of the history of the place I’d just been to. Back in the early-to-mid 1990s a secluded private housing development was built on land which had once contained a 17th century grand manor house and a bleach works built in the early 19th century, and though I’ve passed the entrance to the development many times I’ve never known the history of the land until now.

In the 1600s Bradshaw Hall was built in the rural Bradshaw area of Bolton by John Bradshaw, replacing an earlier building which had existed on the same site, but by the later part of that century the estate wasn’t generating the amount of income he needed, especially as he had a large family to take care of. After mortgaging his estate he took out a substantial loan from the Chethams of Turton Tower but circumstances eventually forced him to sell up and move on, with the estate being bought by Henry Bradshaw, a distant relative from Marple in Cheshire.

The Marple Bradshaws owned the estate for more than two hundred years but as none of the family ever lived at the Hall it was occupied by a succession of tenants. Originally a three-storey house about 60ft long the Hall had a central porch with bay windows at each side but successive alterations were carried out over the years by various tenants.

Bradshaw Hall, date unknown – photo from Lost Heritage

Bradshaw Hall, date unknown – photo from the Bolton News archives

In the 1780s the Lomax family, who were tenants of the Hall at that time, started a small bleaching business where they would lay out cloth in the meadows behind the Hall to bleach naturally in the sun. This often attracted various people who would steal the cloth to make money so to combat this watchmen would put out man-traps and loaded guns fired by a trip wire. Anyone ‘lucky’ enough to get caught by a watchman would either be deported to the colonies or executed. One particular local man, James Holland, was unfortunate enough to be executed for stealing cloth so to make sure everyone got the message the entire workforce was made to watch the hanging.

Eventually bleaching cloth in the sun became obsolete when the proximity of Bradshaw Brook, which provided a large and steady source of water, led to the establishment of a more industrial process, then in 1834 the Bradshaw family sold 60 acres of land to Thomas Hardcastle who already owned a bleaching and dyeing operation elsewhere. He moved into Bradshaw Hall as the new tenant and would later spend a large amount of money restoring it as well as building a new bleach and dye works.

The Hardcastle family came to have a major influence in the Bradshaw area and over the years they funded the building of a new church, constructed a mission hall, built a new school and opened the town’s first bank; they also built several rows of terraced workers’ houses, some of which still exist today. After buying up small local bleaching businesses and with a new printworks producing 2,400 different patterns which were engraved onto copper printing rollers the site at Bradshaw Hall grew to be the largest bleach and dyeworks in Bolton.

A list of workers’ rules printed in 1875 said that all workspaces, including windows and machinery, were to be kept clean, and fines were imposed for being absent without permission, bringing in people who didn’t work there, smoking, drinking, and being in any part of the site where one wasn’t employed to be, with all the fine money going into a club fund for any sick employees.

In 1900 the bleachworks and the Hall were taken over by the Bleachworkers Association though the Hardcastle family continued to live there, with Colonel Henry M Hardcastle being the fourth and last generation. A keen historian, he took a great interest in local historical matters including the sale of Smithills Hall in 1931, and Bradshaw Hall was filled with antiques, old masters, furniture from the 1600s and several suits of armour. The Colonel died in 1948 and some of his possessions were transferred to Turton Tower where they are still on display today. In 1949 the Hall was subjected to an extensive building survey; it was found to have a large amount of dry rot and some parts of the stonework were unsafe so the Bleachworkers Association claimed they would be unable to sell it, meaning that demolition was the only option though it was decided that the central porch would be saved.

Before World War 2 the bleach, dye and print works had employed around 700 people; the business continued in existence after the Hall was demolished but by 1955 employee numbers were down to 300. However with further investment new buildings started to be constructed in 1960 but three years later, and just weeks after they were opened, the whole site was closed down permanently. For the next twenty-odd years a succession of different businesses occupied the buildings but they were gradually showing their age and becoming unsuitable for use; one by one the businesses moved out and by the late 1980s the buildings were derelict. The land was sold for housing though it was hoped that a couple of the three-storey buildings could be saved and converted to apartments, however they were in such a bad state of repair that along with the rest of the works demolition was inevitable. Unfortunately during the demolition process one of the works chimneys fell the wrong way and severely damaged the preserved Bradshaw Hall porch but this was rebuilt in the early 1990s and stands in situ where it can be seen today.

The historical remains of Bradshaw Hall, its gardens and waterways all lie within the Upper Bradshaw Valley Local Nature Reserve and the path along the riverside is part of the Kingfisher Trail, a linear route running 14 miles southwards from the Jumbles Reservoir on the north eastern outskirts of Bolton to Philips Park Nature Reserve just north of Manchester. My walk started at the Jumbles car park at the south end of the reservoir and went downhill to the bottom of the dam, though instead of crossing the bridge over Bradshaw Brook I took the path to the left. This was a route which was new to me and in spite of there being no leaves on the trees I was quite surprised at how attractive it looked.

A few minutes walking got me to a gate leading to Bradshaw Hall Fisheries, a series of nine fishing lakes and ponds, the largest of which were once part of the Bradshaw Hall estate. Although there’s an on-site cafe which is accessible to the public the fishing lakes unfortunately aren’t, so as I couldn’t take my own photos I’ve pinched one from the internet. A bit farther on the path crossed a narrow water channel leading from one of the fishing lakes down to the river; very much an overflow channel it would once have been part of Bradshaw Hall’s water management system.

Bradshaw Hall Fisheries – photo from Fishing Fiend

Eventually I came to a fork in the path and taking the left side I came out onto the Bradshaw Hall housing development. With a nod to the last residents of the Hall the road was called Hardcastle Gardens and just on my right was a three-story block of apartments built in the style of one of the old printworks buildings which had been demolished. Heading towards the main road I came to the Hall’s old timber-framed barn now converted to housing; blocked up archways set at right angles to each other at one end would probably have led to a stable and a cart shed while windows now fill the space where the very large barn doors would have been.

Across the road and through a gate I came to the remains of the Hall’s gardens and the preserved central porch dating from the original part of the 17th century house. The Bradshaw crest sits just above the arched entrance and looking into the porch’s interior shows a stone bench set against each of the side walls.

Some of the original garden paths still exist and these wind their way through mature trees and rhododendron bushes, crossing a small brook and leading to the Hall’s original entrance driveway flanked by two large stone gateposts with iron gates and half a dozen wide stone steps leading up to the main road. It seemed strange to have steps across the Hall’s driveway but presumably they had originally been part of the bleachworks and had been saved and relocated during or after demolition.

Although it was only just gone 3pm the sun was already quite low in the sky as I set off back to the Jumbles car park. It was quite a distance up the road to the turn-off for the Jumbles but with the low sun casting a golden glow over the fields it was a pleasant walk and I managed to snap a few decent shots before I got back to the van.

Before I left home to do this walk I decided not to take the dogs as I suspected that it could be muddy in places and I was right, it was – very – so I was glad I was wearing my wellies, but unlike the previous walk which didn’t seem as good as usual I did enjoy this one. It had been good to discover somewhere new and it’s definitely a walk I can look forward to doing with Snowy and Poppie sometime next year when it’s much drier underfoot.

All Souls Church Bolton – the old and the new

Back in the 19th century two local brothers, Nathaniel and Thomas Greenhalgh who had made a large fortune in the cotton spinning industry, were determined that some of their wealth should go towards improving the spiritual and moral welfare of the people living and working in the industrial sprawl on the outskirts of Bolton. Being fervent members of the evangelical wing of the Church of England they decided to build a school and a church on land they owned off the main road running north from the town centre, and though Nathaniel died in 1877 at the age of 60 Thomas decided to proceed with the scheme in his memory and work started on the school that same year.

In 1878 the architects Paley and Austin of Lancaster were appointed to design the church, with Thomas Greenhalgh’s remit being that the building should be without interior obstructions so that everyone could see and hear the sermon, and there should be no uncomfortable draughts for people to catch colds. Work on the Gothic Revival-style church started that same year though it was entirely without ceremony as Greenhalgh didn’t want the pomp of laying an official foundation stone; the contractors were Cordingley & Stopford of Manchester and the total cost of the build was £20,000, the equivalent of almost £2.4 million at today’s prices. The new church was consecrated by Bishop Fraser of Manchester on June 30th 1881 and the first vicar was the Reverend William Popplewell.

Built of locally made red brick with Longridge stone being used for the external dressings and Stourton stone inside, the church has a north porch and a west door, a small octagonal turret on the north side and a west tower 26ft square. The roofs were covered in Westmorland slate and at one time the tower had a weather vane bearing the date 1881 but unfortunately this was blown off during a storm in 1952 and was never replaced.

Thomas Greenhalgh’s remit that the church interior should be without obstructions produced a large nave 52ft wide and 86ft long with just one central aisle, and a chancel measuring 40ft x 25ft. The high vaulted roof and the panelling of the nave walls were made of pitch pine, as were the original pews which could seat 800 people. The pulpit, lectern, reading desk, choir stalls, altar and communion rails were all designed by Paley and Austin and made of oak.

The church was originally lit by twelve gas pendants then in 1929 electric lighting was introduced, with electric blowers being added to the organ at the same time. The organ itself was built by Abbott of Leeds in 1880 from a specification prepared by S W Pilling of Bolton, with extensive overhauls being carried out in 1959 and again in the 1970s by Peter Wood of Huddersfield. The case, again designed by Paley and Austin, was made of Danzig oak.

The chancel floor is made up of white marble with inlays of Dent black marble, which isn’t true marble but a black crinoidal limestone found in certain areas of Dentdale and quarried during the late 18th century. With its amazing quantity of embedded fossil remains it became known as Dent Marble and was, at one time, very much sought after.

The reredos was designed by John Roddis of Birmingham, sculpted from Mansfield stone and made up of a series of panels containing the Apostles’ Creed, the Decalogue and the Lord’s Prayer, while the large font near the west door was also designed by John Roddis and sculpted from Mansfield stone. In later years an oak font cover was added which was paid for by public subscription in 1930 and dedicated to William Popplewell, the church’s first vicar. The inscription on the plaque reads “To the glory of God and in loving memory of the Rev’d William Popplewell, first vicar of this parish 1879 – 1923”

The eastern windows of the chancel were all made by Clayton & Bell of London and date from the building of the church. Clayton & Bell was one of the most prolific and proficient English stained glass workshops during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, well known for their use of exceptionally bright primary colours. The company was founded in 1855 and continued until 1993 with their windows being found throughout the UK and in America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The windows in All Souls were given in memory of Nathaniel Greenhalgh and show scenes from the New Testament including several from The Acts of the Apostles, all with the relevant quotation below them.

Fast forward through the years and what had once been a large congregation gradually dwindled over time and by the time the church celebrated its centenary in 1981 it was becoming obvious that the building had major problems. From the 1940s there had been several outbreaks of dry rot and in later years vandalism was rife – in 1970 the stained glass windows in the tower were removed after being badly damaged. They had been made by Shrigley and Hunt and had depicted the six days of the Creation but they were replaced with plain glass containing a cross in the upper part of the central light.

In 1986 it was stated that over 80% of the area’s population were of Asian origin with most being Muslims and with the small congregation unable to meet the parish’s financial commitments closure of the church was inevitable; the last service was held there on December 28th that same year. To avoid All Souls suffering the same fate as its sister church, which had been in another area of the town and was demolished in 1975, in June 1987 the church was vested in the Redundant Churches Fund, now known as the Churches Conservation Trust. Since then the Trust has undertaken several major repairs to the fabric of the building including eradicating the dry rot and pointing the brickwork.

In 2007 a local resident, Inayat Omarji, who had lived in the area all his life, recognised the church’s potential to be a community, events and business centre and after gathering support and financial backing for its regeneration a rescue plan was developed in partnership with the Churches Conservation Trust. Renovation and restoration work began in September 2013 and was completed in November 2014, with the doors finally reopening to the public on December 6th that year.

Because the inside of the church had been originally designed without pillars or aisles it was very adaptable to its new purpose as an events and community space. The philosophy of the restoration was to preserve the original beauty of the church while incorporating the very best of contemporary design and the interior now features two connected 3-storey ‘pods’ which are independent of the main building and touch neither the sides nor the roof of it. The newly designed interior provides an events space in the main body of the church for heritage and community activity, a ground floor coffee shop, a history wall, office space and five meeting rooms, while the chancel and all its original features remain intact. The building is still consecrated as a church and weddings can still be held there with the permission of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

In spite of All Souls being only a mile from home I’d never actually been in there, either in the past or in more recent years, however I visited a couple of weeks ago on one of the Heritage Open Days – and I have to say that what you see on the inside is definitely not  what you would expect to see from the outside.

The church as it was – photo from the internet

As it is now – looking down the nave

View from the chancel

After spending some time wandering round taking photos and reading various bits of information on the history wall I sat down to listen to a very interesting talk on the history of the church given by Suzanne, one of the community workers, then I had the opportunity to climb the tower steps up onto the roof, stopping a couple of times on the way up to look down into the main body of the church.

The tower is 117ft high with a narrow spiral stone staircase of 180 steps and a ring of eight bells cast in 1880 by J Taylor & Co. of Loughborough. The tenor bell alone weighs over 23cwt (1160kg) with the whole ring of eight weighing a total of 90cwt (4570kg). Going up  the staircase was certainly a test of heart and lung capacity, though with no handrail or rope to hold onto coming back down was more a test of nerve and definitely not for the faint-hearted.

Looking down from the first balcony

The ringing room

From the ringing room balcony

Up in the main roof

From the third balcony

The strenuous climb up the tower steps was certainly worth it as I was rewarded with 360 degree views and I could see for miles in all directions; the weather was glorious and I got several good shots looking over the immediate area and beyond, with the high-rises of Manchester city centre on the horizon.

Back at ground level I had another wander round to catch up on anything I’d previously missed – and I still didn’t manage to see or read everything – then it was time to go as it was almost closing time. I’d been there for over two hours and it was certainly time well spent – I’d learnt something of the history of All Souls and it had been interesting to see the modern ‘building within a building’. The church is open every weekday so who knows, I may very well be tempted to pop in sometime when I’m passing to sample their coffee and cake.

Bolton’s street art…

What little there is of it anyway.

My Monday walk this week is a relatively short one across the town centre from north to south, starting at the 1st Edition tattoo parlour just on the north edge of town. It’s round the corner from one of the places where I work so I pass it regularly ; the mural on the side wall has been done by a Hungarian-born Preston tattoo artist with over ten years experience working as a graphic designer, illustrator and street artist.

Artist – Andrew Senph

Down into the town centre itself now, and the Greyhound pub on Deansgate. Unfortunately I’ve been unable to find out any history of the pub other than for some strange reason it’s referred to locally as the Kicking Donkey ; on its side wall is one of several murals done by an artist going by the name of Kaser.

Artist – Kaser

A few minutes walk from the Greyhound and past the open market took me to the Griffin pub on Great Moor Street and a Kaser mural on the corner wall, though again I can find no history of the pub itself.

Artist – Kaser

Another few minutes walk and I came to the Sweet Green Tavern on Crook Street, and more murals by Kaser. Yet again I’ve been unable to find out much history of the pub though the very friendly young lady behind the bar did tell me that the building used to be three separate premises. The window on the far left was once a doorway and that and the two windows on its right were the original pub which was just one room. The existing doorway and the two windows to its right belonged to a bakery and the other three windows were the doorway and windows of a house.

Stretching along the pub’s rear wall, and bordering the main road, is a large mural which pays tribute to the photos of Humphrey Spender and the Mass Observation of 1937/38. Seen close up it’s just a jumble of black and grey shapes but from across the road (or in my case the middle of the road!) it makes more sense.

Artist – Kaser

On the end wall of the pub is another mural by Kaser, taken from a photo of the 1918 Crook Street train crash. On March 16th that year a coal train with an engine weighing 70 tons pulling wagons carrying over 400 tons of coal ran out of control going down the incline approaching Bolton Terminal Station. It was diverted into the Crook Street goods yard but ran through the yard, smashed through the buffers and the boundary wall, crossed the road diagonally and smashed into two small houses. The guard jumped from the brake van but the driver and fireman stayed on the footplate ; fortunately none of the men suffered more than minor injuries but eight people living in the houses were injured, though not seriously. In addition to the damage to the engine and the houses five coal wagons were completely wrecked and seven others were damaged.

Artist – Kaser

Framed article in the pub, taken from the local paper in 1998

Going through the pub and out into the outside smoking area I found a plethora of murals by Kaser. Unfortunately some of the canopy supports prevented me from getting completely uninterrupted photos of some of the murals but the shots I got were good enough. My favourite was the hummingbird on the end wall, and even though it was looking a bit worse for wear it was still quite pretty.

This has no connection to the artist Banksy – the landlord’s name is Banks

As far as I’m aware these murals are the only examples of street art in my town ; I can think of several places which could be brightened up with a mural or two so it’s a shame that most of these are hidden behind the outside wall of a pub’s beer garden. I’m glad I found out about them though, and at least I’ve added a few more photos to my street art collection.

 

Town centre heritage trail – some local history and photos

The industrial past of my home town, Bolton, lives on today in many ways, including the work and inventions of several famous locals who helped to forge and shape the industrial revolution. The Industrial Heritage Town Centre Walking Trail has 12 sites of interest including historic buildings and statues, and my Monday walk this week starts at the first one, the Town Hall in Victoria Square.

In the mid 19th century the town’s mayor at the time, J R Wolfenden, promoted the idea for a town hall and a competition for the design was held by Bolton Corporation. It was won by architect William Hill of Leeds in partnership with Bolton’s George Woodhouse and building began in 1866. A quarter-chiming clock by Potts of Leeds was installed in the baroque-style clock tower in 1871 and the completed Town Hall was opened by Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, in 1873. In later years the design was re-used by William Hill as the template to build Portsmouth’s Civic Town Hall in 1890, which is a near-identical twin, though it was renamed Portsmouth Guildhall in 1926 when the town was elevated to city status.

In the early 1930s the rear of the town hall was extended to the designs of local architects Bradshaw, Gass & Hope and which matched the original building, with a crescent of civic buildings providing office space built to the rear on a new street. Inside the town hall was the Albert Hall, a central hall used for concerts and official functions, which was surrounded on three sides by a wide corridor and an outer ring of offices. In 1978 local steeplejack Fred Dibnah made repairs to the clock tower and its 16 stone pillars and gilded the sphere at the top. On November 14th 1981 the Albert Hall was unfortunately gutted by a devastating fire but the rest of the building was saved, with the hall itself being rebuilt as two public halls, the new Albert Hall and the Festival Hall.

To the right of the town hall is the statue of Lieutenant Colonel Sir Benjamin Alfred Dobson. Although born on the Isle of Man he was a descendant of the founder of Bolton company Dobson & Barlow, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of textile machinery. He studied as a civil engineer and entered the family firm in 1871, eventually becoming Chairman ; he also wrote books about the spinning industry and held several engineering patents. As a Conservative MP Dobson represented North Ward for six years from 1874 and was a magistrate from 1880.

In March 1879 Dobson opened the lattice girder ‘Dobson Bridge’ in Queen’s Park and in June 1884 he opened the Chadwick Museum in the same park. In 1894 he became Mayor of Bolton, with his wife Coralie being the first Mayoress to wear the Mayoress’s Chain and Badge ; he was knighted in July 1897 and died in March 1898 while still in office. The statue of Dobson, modelled by Manchester sculptor John Cassidy, was purchased by public subscription and was unveiled in February 1900. In much later years his great grandson, Christopher Brian Spencer Dobson, who was a lawyer, politician, comedian and actor, co-wrote the screenplay for Nicholas Roeg’s 1973 film ”Don’t Look Now” (starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland) under the name Chris Bryant.

About 50 yards away from the Dobson statue, in a huge reinforced glass case, is the Corliss Steam Engine built in Bolton by Hick Hargreaves & Co Ltd in 1886. The original Corliss steam engine was invented in 1849 in Rhode Island, America, by George Henry Corliss who managed to create an engine that was 30% more efficient than conventional ones. This was an important breakthrough as it meant that for the first time steam power became more economical than water power. This in turn meant that as factories no longer needed to use water to turn their wheels but could use a steam engine instead they could be built anywhere, not just next to a suitable river. The Corliss engine was ideal for textile mills as it had adjustable speed and power, which was useful when connected to machines for the spinning of delicate thread.

The Bolton engine was in use until 1969 in a silk spinning mill owned by Ford, Ayrton & Co in Bentham, North Yorkshire, and when it came to the end of its working life it was donated to the people of Bolton. Representing a typical steam engine which would have powered so many mills throughout the region, it was erected and placed in its huge glass case by Bolton Corporation when Oxford Street and Newport Street were pedestrianised in 1973. At one time the large wheel could be seen going round on Saturdays but it hasn’t turned for many years now.

The Bank of Bolton on Deansgate was a joint stock bank established in 1836 with a capital of £300,000. In 1896 it was acquired by Manchester & County Bank Ltd which eventually became part of the National Westminster Bank. The Coat of Arms still exists on the outside of the building and also in some of the interior stained glass, though of course for security reasons I wasn’t allowed to take any photos inside.

Along Deansgate and past the junction with Bradshawgate is Churchgate and Booth’s Music Shop which occupies the site of Arkwright’s Barbers Shop established in the early 1760s. Born in Preston, Lancashire, in 1732 Richard Arkwright was apprenticed to a barber in nearby Kirkham and began his adult working life as a barber and wig maker, setting up his shop in Bolton’s Churchgate. It was here that he invented a waterproof dye for use on the fashionable periwigs of the time, the income from which later funded his prototype cotton machinery.

After the death of his first wife Arkwright became interested in the development of carding and spinning machinery to replace hand labour in the conversion of raw cotton to thread for weaving, and in 1768 he returned to Preston with John Kay, a clock maker, where they rented rooms in a house on Stoneygate, now called Arkwright House. There they worked on developing a spinning machine and in 1769 Arkwright patented the spinning frame which produced twisted threads using wooden and metal cylinders rather than human fingers. This machine, initially powered by horses, greatly reduced the cost of cotton-spinning and would lead to major changes in the textile industry. The original building where Arkwright had his barbers shop was demolished in the early 1920s, being replaced by the existing building, though there is a plaque commemorating him on the wall above the music shop windows.

At the far end of Churchgate is the large St. Peter’s Church, commonly known as Bolton Parish Church. The fourth church to be built on that site, it was designed by Lancaster architect E G Paley. Paid for by Peter Ormrod, a local cotton spinner of Halliwell Hall whose father founded the Bank of Bolton, it was built between 1867 and 1871 in the Gothic Revival style. Its tower, at 180ft high, is the tallest in the historic county of Lancashire and has spectacular 360-degree views across the area. The spacious and beautiful interior contains many items of interest including fine stained glass windows, carved woodwork, a museum corner and an organ with beautifully decorated case and pipes. Guided tours of the church can be pre-booked, and having been in there myself a couple of years ago it’s a church well worth seeing.

In the grounds of the Parish Church is Samuel Crompton’s tomb. Building on the work of James Hargreaves and Richard Arkwright Crompton invented the spinning mule, a machine which greatly revolutionised the cotton spinning industry. Unfortunately his invention was never patented, which allowed others to copy his idea, and in 1827 he died a poor man at his house in King Street in the town centre. It’s said that a large number of people attended his funeral, including some of Bolton’s factory owners ; his original gravestone was very simple but in 1861 the existing granite monument, paid for by the workers of Dobson & Barlow Ltd, was placed over the grave.

Not far from the Parish Church is Wood Street, a short cobbled street of Georgian terraced houses, most of which are now offices, and No. 16 is the birthplace of William Hesketh Lever, industrialist, politician, landowner and major Bolton benefactor. Lever started work at his father’s grocery business in Bolton but as a businessman he is noted for founding the soap and cleaning product firm, Lever Brothers with his younger brother James in 1885, and at Port Sunlight on the Wirral he built his works and a model village to house its employees. Lord Leverhulme was asked to become Mayor of Bolton in 1918 and for some time worked with town planners on a grand architectural revival for Bolton.

Along the road from Wood Street is Nelson Square and the Samuel Crompton statue. In honour of his contribution towards revolutionising the cotton spinning industry a statue paid for by public subscription was unveiled on 24th September 1862 and still stands proud today.

Heading back towards the town hall and on one corner of Victoria Square is No. 1 Newport Street, the Exchange Building. Built in 1826 by the Bolton Exchange Company it was originally a trading exchange inside which was a private reading room. This developed into a private library which later became Bolton’s first public library. Later still it became Bolton Council Reference Library and remained as such until 1938 when the library services were transferred to the new civic buildings behind the town hall. By 1956 the building was being used by the Inland Revenue Valuation Office, in the years since then it has been a building society and is now currently a Coral’s betting shop.

Bolton Museum, Art Gallery and Central Library are all housed together at one end of the Civic Centre buildings designed by local architects Bradshaw, Gass & Hope in the 1930s. The museum collections include natural history, Egyptology, archaeology, art and local history, and one of Britain’s oldest public aquariums, opened in 1941, is housed in the basement.

In 2003, after consulting experts at the British Museum and Christies, Bolton Museum bought the small sculpture Armana Princess  for £439,767 from a local man who claimed it was from his grandfather’s forgotten collection. The sculpture remained on display until 2006 when it was exposed as a fake ; after an investigation the forger was found to be the local man who, over a period of several years, had produced many forged works of art in his garden shed, including what was said to be an original Lowry painting – he was eventually sentenced to 4 years 8 months in prison. In recent years the museum received £3.8 million in grant funding to update and improve its collections and displays and after a refurbishment programme lasting almost two years it re-opened in September 2018, with the Armana Princess  back on display in a special section for fakes and forgeries.

The museum and art gallery concluded my circular walking trail round the town centre but there was one more place on the list – Queen’s Park. Although not actually in the town centre one part of the park was right on the edge and was included in the trail because of its heritage connections. Originally opened in 1866 as Bolton Park it was renamed by the Town Council in 1897 in honour of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The park is the original site of the Chadwick Museum, which eventually became the Bolton Museum and Art Gallery, and it also has the Dobson Bridge, erected in 1878 to link the original park to a later extension and officially opened by B A Dobson who was Chairman of the Park Committee at the time.

Dobson Bridge, Queen’s Park, on a much nicer day

Unfortunately when I did this walk two days ago the weather wasn’t exactly brilliant, it was so dull and grey that I’ve had to seriously enhance these photos to properly show some of the sites of interest, but hopefully I’ll have time to do the walk again on a much nicer day and I’ll be able to replace these shots with some better ones.

Bury Parish Church – some history and photos

This week’s Monday walk, if you can call it that, features a wander round a church about seven miles from home in the next town. The Parish Church of St. Mary the Virgin is situated right on the edge of Bury town centre, just a couple of minutes walk from the interchange and the main shopping centre and not far from the well known open market. Church records suggest that the first church on the site was a wood and thatch structure which was replaced in the late 16th century by a building in the Gothic style ; between 1773 and 1780 the main body of this church was demolished and rebuilt although the spire wasn’t touched.

The spire itself was replaced in 1842 but by 1870 the timbers in the rest of the church had rotted and another new building was needed. The current church was designed on a much grander scale by architect J S Crowther and was built leaving the 1842 spire in place ; construction took five years and the church was finally consecrated on February 2nd 1876. The interior features hammerbeam and tie-beam roof trusses, decorative mosaic flooring by Minton and stained glass windows by Clayton & Bell and Hardman & Company, while the tower houses eight bells, six of which date from 1722.

The nave is 84ft 6ins long, 30ft wide and 76ft 6ins high, with the windows on the north wall depicting Old Testament figures while those on the south wall depict those from the New Testament. Unfortunately most of the windows were so high up that I would have needed to use an exceptionally long step ladder to get good clear shots of them. The west wall rises in four stages to the great rose window and was inspired by Westminster Abbey, while the pulpit was given in memory of Reverend Roger Kay who re-founded Bury Grammar School in 1726 ; it’s believed that he is actually buried beneath the pulpit.

The nave and sanctuary

The ornate sanctuary screen

Looking down the nave from the sanctuary

The organ was at one time situated above the west door but it was relocated to its current position when the church was rebuilt in 1876. Originally a tracker action organ electrics were eventually installed and the console was moved to the south side of the chancel where it faced east. The organ was rebuilt in 2007, keeping some of the original pipework and giving it a French sound, and the console was turned to face south.

Flooring in the South Chapel

South Chapel reredos – Mary and child flanked by patron saints of Britain

Looking down the nave to the west wall

The church is also the garrison church of the Lancashire Fusiliers. On April 25th 1915 the Lancashire Fusiliers were involved in taking West Beach at Gallipoli, for which the regiment won six VCs, and each year a service is held on the nearest Sunday to that date to commemorate those who took part in Gallipoli and subsequent battles. For anyone interested in regimental history the church has a number of colours hung on display along with memorial tablets, record books and other artefacts, with a dedicated museum in the old Fusiliers building round the corner.

The Fusilier Museum

I hadn’t originally intended going into the church as I was in Bury for an entirely different reason, but when I saw the ‘church open’ sign on the outside railings I thought I may as well pop in for a quick look and I’m glad I did. It’s a lovely place with many interesting features, more than I realised at the time, so it would be worth making a return visit the next time I go to Bury – and with a nice little café just across the road I can treat myself to coffee and cake as well.

New Year’s Day walk 2019

After more than two weeks of almost constant gloomy and wet weather New Year’s Day was dry, bright and sunny so I took the opportunity to go for an afternoon walk round part of Leverhulme Park, a local place I hadn’t been to for about twenty years. Unfortunately though, I couldn’t take the dogs this time – with Sophie having recently had a major operation she wasn’t allowed out and it wouldn’t have been fair to take Poppie and leave Sophie behind so for once I was on my own.

Leverhulme Park is the largest of all the local parks and was gifted to the town by well-known local soap magnate and generous benefactor William Hesketh Lever (Lord Leverhulme). Back in 1914 Bolton Corporation was negotiating to buy 67 acres of land on the outskirts of town to turn into a park but when WW1 broke out government restrictions made it impossible to raise all the money necessary for the purchase. When William Lever heard about this he bought the land himself and presented it to the town, then went on to buy further pieces of land to extend the park to 98 acres – a total of 88 of these acres were donated by him and the park was eventually named Leverhulme Park in his honour.

Although the top end of the park provides the usual park facilities – well mown grass, bowling greens, cricket pitches, football pitch, playground, dog walking areas and more recently an up-to-date leisure centre and running track – the bottom end has more of a countryside look with wild meadows, woodland, two rivers and several unmade tracks and paths, and it was this part I was going to explore.

My walk started at the main car park close to the playground and followed a wide tree-lined tarmac path with the cricket pitches and a bowling green up a bank on my left. After a while the tarmac changed to cobbles and the path went downhill through a small wooded area, ending up close to a road where a row of cottages nestled in the shadow of the 86ft high Darcy Lever viaduct. This was once part of the railway line connecting Bolton to Bury but the line was closed in 1970 and the track was left derelict for many years, though more recently the viaduct has become part of a shared footpath/cycleway running from Bolton to Radcliffe.

A few yards along from the cottages the River Tonge flowed down wide shallow steps and under the road ; footpaths ran both right and left of the river and I took the right hand one as I knew that would take me back into the park. I hadn’t gone far when the path split at the beginning of a wild meadow ; going straight on would take me directly across the meadow so I went left through a small coppice and followed the river round the meadow’s edge. At the point where Bradshaw Brook joined the river itself a man was throwing sticks into the water for his dog although it looked rather gloomy just there as the tall trees were keeping the sunlight at bay.

The River Tonge

Bradshaw Brook

At the far side of the meadow the path took me through a thicket of trees to a second meadow ; the man and his dog had given up playing in the river and were walking ahead of me. On the left was a bridge with stone parapets and railings, a bridge which I knew would lead to another more cultivated part of the park although I would save that one for another time. Continuing straight on the path led through more woodland but not sure of where I would end up I turned right and followed a nearby dirt track uphill.

Bradshaw Brook near the bridge – a great spot for picnics and paddling in summer

Looking towards the meadow from the bridge

The top of the dirt track brought me out onto the main path through the top end of the park close to the running track ; although it was only just after 3 o’clock I was already losing the best of the sunlight so deciding that it was time to go home I followed the path past one of the more modern slide constructions and back to the car park.

It had seemed strange walking without the dogs but although it hadn’t been a long walk – time-wise it had only taken 45 minutes – it had been a good one and it was nice to see that the bottom end of the park hadn’t really changed in the years since I was last there. I’d got some good photos too so I must remember to go back in the spring/early summer to see the differences a change of season will make.

My walk, clockwise from yellow dot

It’s good to see that my blogging friend Jo is resuming her Monday walks when she can so I’m linking this with her latest, a walk round a nature reserve and salt marshes in Southern Spain, ending with some delicious-looking cake and cream.

Radcliffe Tower and Close Park

My Monday walk this week is more of a wander than a walk and features a look round Radcliffe Tower and Close Park at Radcliffe, a town just over six miles from home. Being a frequent visitor to the large camping store in Radcliffe I’ve been to the town many times over the years but I didn’t know anything about Radcliffe Tower until just three days ago when I was reading through someone else’s blog. It seemed that the tower and park are in an area of the town which I’ve only ever passed through a couple of times on my way to somewhere else, which was probably why I didn’t know about it, so as there was plenty of sunshine and blue sky on Saturday afternoon I decided to take the dogs and check things out.

A 20-minute drive took me to the car park at the entrance to Close Park, and though I was itching to look round the park straight away I decided to find the tower first. Just off the main road and adjacent to the car park was Church Green, a three-sided cobbled lane with three modern terraced houses on one side, a small public garden in the middle and St. Mary’s church at the bottom end. Built in the 14th century with the tower being added in the 15th century the church is Grade l listed, with the churchyard containing the war graves of six soldiers from WW1 and three from WW2. Unfortunately the central garden and the front of the church itself were very much in the shade but I got a couple of photos then moved on to find the tower.

The Parish Church of St. Mary

A path from the car park took me over a wide water-filled channel – originally a closed-off part of the nearby River Irwell – and past the back of the church to another path behind the far side of the graveyard ; the ruined tower and its surrounding land were completely enclosed by a high galvanised steel perimeter fence but at least there was a gate which allowed access during daylight hours.

The back of the church seen through the trees

Radcliffe Tower west wall and original entrance

Built as a typical fortified pele tower the earliest record of it dates back to 1358 ; it would have been three stories high with storage on the ground floor and living accommodation above. In 1403 the tower’s owner, James de Radcliffe, was given permission by King Henry IV to fortify his house and a new Great Hall was built to adjoin the tower, forming Radcliffe Manor, with the original ground floor storage area being converted into a kitchen with a fireplace on each of three walls. In 1517 the Manor passed to a distant branch of the Radcliffe family and in 1561 it was sold to the Assheton family who lived near Rochdale. They leased the hall and its land to tenant farmers, with subsequent members of the family continuing to do the same until 1765 when it was sold to the Earl of Wilton from Heaton Hall near Prestwich, though he continued to let it out to tenants.

By the early 1800s much of the Manor’s former grandeur had gone, with residents living only in the small west wing. The Great Hall was converted into a barn and the tower itself was used as a farm building, with the huge ground floor fireplaces in the south and east walls being knocked through to give access for farm carts and/or animals. By 1840 the Great Hall and the west wing were in such a state of disrepair that they were demolished and some of the stone from their foundations was used to build cottages nearby. The tower itself was spared and continued to be used as a farm building, with a new farmhouse being built to the north of where the Great Hall had been standing.

In 1925 the tower was scheduled as a monument and though it stayed in the ownership of the Wilton family until the 1950s the land round it wasn’t protected and in the 1940s gravel quarrying began to the south of the tower. By the 1960s the nearby farmhouse and cottages had been demolished, then starting in the 1970s the quarry was turned into a landfill site with large trucks rumbling right past the tower which, protected only by a fence round it, was in a very delapidated state by then. The future of the tower began to change in 1988 though when Bury Council took over ownership and conservation and stabilisation took place, which included blocking up two windows and the original fireplace arches. The scheduling of the monument was extended to include the land where the Great Hall had stood and by 2007 the landfill site had gone, with Bury Council acquiring the rest of the land surrounding the tower.

Starting in 2012 a series of archaeological investigations took place on the tower and Great Hall site and also on the site of the later farm and cottages which had been built nearby – finds from the Great Hall site included 15th century Cistercian drinking pots and storage jars and also showed that the floor would have been made from glazed tiles. Today the Medieval fabric of the tower has been professionally conserved and restored and the area round it has been landscaped, with a ‘pathway’ next to the tower marking out the footprint of the original Great Hall.

The north wall with a fireplace arch still visible

A window in the east wall

The south wall with another fireplace arch

West wall window showing the underside of a spiral stone staircase

West wall showing the diagonal roof line where the Great Hall was joined to the tower

Part of the footprint of the Great Hall marked out by a continuous pathway on the ground

At various points around the grounds covered information boards told the history of the tower site and once I’d read and photographed them all I made my way through the gate and back along the path to the park.  Close Park was originally the grounds to Close House, the home of the Bealey family who established a nearby bleaching business in the 18th century ; in 1925 the family presented the house to what was then Radcliffe Urban District Council for use as a Child Welfare Centre, with the grounds being converted into a public park for the town’s inhabitants. The house was also used as a clinic, a museum and an ambulance centre before being demolished in 1969, and the nearby bleachworks was finally demolished in the 1980s when a modern housing estate was built on the site. Current facilities and attractions at the park include 7 football pitches, 3 tennis courts, a bowling green, outdoor gym, children’s playground, a sensory garden and various sculptures which are part of the Irwell Sculpture Trail.

Starting from the car park the first thing I saw was a huge stainless steel dinosaur, one of three sculptures created by artist Mark Jalland in consultation with children from local primary schools. From there I followed the path down to the sensory garden and what I first thought was a water feature was actually a stainless steel and copper sculpture based on a cup cake, although after seeing it on an internet picture it seemed to have lost its chocolate topping. The third sculpture, not far from the bowling green, was a cheetah wearing trainers – presumably meant to signify running fast but strangely the trainers were only on diagonal feet. Who knows what goes on in the minds of these artists?!

‘James and his ball of fire’ inspired by papercraft models and inflatable animals

‘Chococupcakeboy’ based on a chocolate cup cake

‘Tara in her trainers’

Having found the three sculptures I wandered at random round the rest of the park ; the playing fields stretched for quite a distance but there didn’t seem to be much in that direction so I stuck to the main body of the park, and with the sunlight really showing off the autumn colours of the trees I got several lovely shots before ending my wander back at the car park.

Downloading my photos onto the pc later on it struck me what a brilliant resource the internet is, even though it’s something that most of us now take for granted. I’d only found out about Radcliffe Tower and Close Park through reading a blog which I’d found from a link on another blog I’d discovered while doing a general search for something else – if it hadn’t been for that I could have lived the rest of my life in total ignorance of the place but now I know about the park I’ll certainly pay another visit in the not-too-distant future.

Inside Turton Tower

After visiting the gardens of Turton Tower while on a dog walk back in March, but being unable to go into the building itself, I decided last Saturday to take a couple of hours out and explore the place properly. Unfortunately the blue sky and sunshine of the morning had disappeared by the time I set out just after lunch but once I’d parked up I still took a walk through the grounds before going to look round inside. I must have looked rather suspicious while taking photos outside the main gates as one of the volunteer gardeners came to see what I was doing but she seemed quite happy when she saw my camera and even told me that the gates, with their ironwork decorations and coats of arms, had recently been repainted by another of the volunteers.

The castellated railway bridge commissioned by James Kay in 1847

The second footbridge, now overgrown and with no access across

The summer house

The main gates, not in use

The oldest part of the building is the tower itself, built in the early 15th century, but entrance to the house is now actually round the side, and once I’d paid the £6 fee I was given a picture guide to the different rooms then I was free to wander at will. In the first room, which was actually the original entrance hall, one of the volunteer guides gave me a lot of information about the place, information which even my previous research hadn’t told me. She was a very interesting lady to talk to and I could have stayed chatting for hours but I had a house to explore.

The original entrance door

This side of the table had no carved decoration

The unicorn tapestry

The right hand wall of this room was part of a cruck-frame extension which wasn’t connected to the main building. The whole lot was eventually joined together by the roof but a narrow gap still exists between the two separate walls.

The very top floor of the original tower is known as the Chetham Room and was converted in the 19th century by the Kay family into a bedroom and billiard room. These are long gone, with the space becoming one big room with the walls stripped back so the original stone architecture can be seen. On a half-landing just outside this room is the top of the original stone spiral staircase which would, at one time, have run down the outside of the tower – this was restored by the Kay family and can be seen through a clear panel set into the floor, but because of the reflection from a light above, my attempt to photograph it wasn’t very successful.

The Chetham Room

A collection of horse brasses at the top of the stairs

Looking down the stairwell

With the last photo taken inside I went out for a brief wander round the gardens. The afternoon had turned out to be very dull and it looked like it might rain so it wasn’t long before I was back in the van and on my way towards home. I realise this post is very photo-heavy but Turton Tower is a fascinating place with a lot of history and so much to take photos of, in fact I could easily have taken many more than I actually did and I’ve had to be ruthless in deciding which to include and which to leave out.

A brief history of the place can be found here in my post from March, and a much more detailed account with some interesting reading can be found on this blog written by A & R Bowden. It was a shame that the weather turned out to be so grey after the sunshine of earlier but at least that gives me an excuse to visit Turton Tower another time in the not-too-distant future when hopefully there’ll be plenty of blue sky.

 

Smithills Hall – some local history and a few memories

Surrounded by 120 acres of gardens and open land with a steep wooded valley and small lake to the north, Smithills Hall is a Grade l listed manor house situated on the lower slopes of the West Pennine Moors and three miles north west of Bolton town centre. One of the oldest manor houses in north west England, the first written records began when William Radcliffe obtained the manor from the Hulton family in 1335. On William’s death in 1369 the hall passed to his son Sir Ralph Radcliffe who was an MP and High Sheriff of Lancashire, with the Radcliffes living there until 1485. When the male line failed the hall passed to the Bartons, a family of wealthy sheep farmers, and in 1520 the private chapel was rebuilt by Andrew Barton, with successive generations of the Barton family living at the manor for nearly 200 years.

In 1554 George Marsh, a Protestant preacher from another area of the town, was accused of heresy and questioned at Smithills Hall by Justice Robert Barton, and it’s said that after questioning he stamped his foot so hard to reaffirm his Protestant faith that his footprint was left in the stone floor outside the withdrawing room. He was then sent to Chester where he was tried and found guilty, finally being executed on April 24th 1555 – and the ‘footprint’, which is now protected by a reinforced glass panel, is said to bleed every year on the anniversary of his death.

In 1659 Smithills Hall and estate passed by marriage to the Belasyse family but as they owned several other properties around England they didn’t really need to keep the hall so it entered a period of neglect. In 1722 the Byrom family of Manchester bought the manor and kept it until 1801 when it was sold to the Ainsworths, a family of successful Bolton bleachers, and under three generations of that family the hall was extensively rebuilt and modernised. In 1870 Richard Henry Ainsworth, Colonel Ainsworth’s great nephew, inherited the hall and in 1875 he employed the prominent Victorian architect George Devey to design the most significant improvements to the building.

Changes in the British economy after WW1 increased the upkeep costs and reduced the amount of income the Ainsworth family could raise from the Smithills estate, with the financial burden of maintaining a large house and grounds finally becoming too great, so in 1938 the hall was sold to Bolton Corporation for over £70,000. The Victorian parts of the hall became a council residential home and many years of conservation work on the older parts allowed it to open as a museum in 1963. The residential home closed in the early 1990s but that part of the hall was used as a day centre before closing for good several years later, with the museum eventually being extended into some of the rooms.

The west wing is the most recent part of the building to be renovated and restored to its former Victorian glory and the entrance hall is now a reception area and small shop, with a bright modern exhibition room leading off it. Also on the ground floor is Poppins Tea Room, a Mary Poppins-themed Edwardian tea room with a menu which includes Mr Banks’s Afternoon Tea, Bert’s Cream Tea and a selection of sandwiches, light lunches and desserts. The hall is also licensed for civil weddings and these can be held in the Medieval Great Hall, the Tudor Withdrawing Room or the newly refurbished Devey Room.

The Medieval Great Hall

The Withdrawing Room

These Heraldic Panels were originally commissioned in 1843 as decoration for the withdrawing room and to honour the families that lived at Smithills Hall – they were professionally restored to their former magnificent glory in 2006 and to keep them in good condition visitors are requested not to touch them.

The Bower room

The Solar room

The carved oak tester bed

From old to ultra-modern – the bright new exhibition rooms

The grammar school I went to back in the late 1960s was just down the road from Smithills Hall, in fact the school playing fields were, and still are, adjacent to the Hall’s lower gardens. Every three months we would have assembly services in the chapel and each year just before Christmas the school choir, of which I was a member, would go up to the Hall and sing carols to the residents of the retirement home part. I remember doing art and history projects there too, and one particular art project in my final year was conducted by a young modern teacher with some quite wacky ideas.

Using the green of the Smithills Hall lawns as a contrasting colour we all had to put on full length ‘costumes’, half of us in black and the other half in white,  which were basically cotton bags which covered us from head to foot, including our arms, and which just had small holes for our eyes. We then had to stand in small groups at strategic points and move, either individually or as a group, in whichever direction she told us while she filmed us – the black and white costumes were supposed to correspond with the black and white of the building but I never did understand the point of it all. Imagine trying to walk somewhere while encased head to foot in a cloth bag and only able to see through a couple of small holes – a lot of falling over and bumping into each other occurred but it was all good fun and at least it got us out of doing a proper lesson.

I remember one rather amusing incident regarding Smithills Hall which occurred when I was 14. Tim, a family friend who was an old army buddy of my dad’s, had come up from Worcester to stay with us for a while and as he liked historical buildings I took him to Smithills Hall one day. As we walked round we heard what we thought was the sound of a radio coming from the vicinity of the chapel but when we got there we discovered that it was the vicar vacuuming the carpet in the central aisle and singing away as he worked! Of course we apologised for disturbing him but he said he didn’t mind and he left us to wander round. That incident was mentioned a few times in conversation over the following years – sadly Tim passed away in 2006 but I’ve never forgotten the day we caught the vicar singing as he vacuumed the chapel carpet.

My visit to Smithills Hall earlier this year – my first for many years –  was actually part of a dog walk I did in glorious weather during the second bank holiday back in May, but as dogs aren’t allowed in the building I had to leave Sophie and Poppie just outside the entrance, meaning that my visit was very much a whistle-stop tour, but I still managed to get a fair amount of photos. The place is definitely worth a revisit but next time I’ll go without the dogs so I can spend much more time in there.