HULME HALL NEAR ALLOSTOCK

Grosvenor and Shakerley Families

Grid Ref. SJ 725 724
13 May 2000, 16 March 2010 & 29 August 2015

 

Hulme Hall   interior
The main building in 2000   Interior in 2010 
front view   derelict hall
With scaffolding in 2010   As seen over the bridge in 2010
bridge   Hulme Hall
The bridge over the moat   The view over the bridge in Aug 2015

 

 

HULME HALL: A RUIN RESCUED

Hulme Hall was formerly a moated house but part of the moat was filled in when I last visited.  The remains of an old stone bridge can still be seen.   As noted below, it has been used as a farmhouse since at least 1810.  On the northern side of the current plain brick house there was an extension of more recent date.  It was disappointing to see further deterioration of the property between 2000 and 2010. The pictures from May 2000, with a 1.3 megapixel Fuji MX-700 camera, show the roof and windows still intact. It was possible to approach the property where the moat has been partly filled in. In 2010 the property was fenced off and was in a dangerous state of decay as shown by three lower pictures, taken with a Canon 450D SLR camera and a 55-250 mm lens. However, this Grade II* listed building and the bridge, also Grade II* has undergone a major restoration to produce a six bedroom, five bathroom luxury home set in 3 acres. The work has been undertaken in conjunction with English Heritage. The images accompanying the estate agents' full page spread in the Macclesfield Express in September 2014 show a truly remarkable tranformation. In 2015 I passed again and from the public footpath one can see the hall over the bridge, with its tank stops still in place.

The following notes are from the Lysons' Magna Britannia,  Vol. 2, published in 1810, page 536.

"The township of Allostock lies five miles S. by W. from Knutsford, in the hundred of Northwich; the manor was conveyed to the Grosvenors in the reign of Edward 1 by John de Lostock.  The Grosvenors had their chief seat at Hulme in this township, (purchased in the reign of Henry III from Gralam de Runchamp) till the death of Robert Grosvenor Esq. in whom the male line of the elder branch became extinct in 1465, when his estates were divided between his daughters and co-heirs.  The manor of Allostock is now (1810) divided between Sir John Leicester Bart. (of Tabley) who possesses two fifths, and C. W. J. Shakerley Esq. of Somerford, who possesses three fifths.   The manor of Hulme appears to have been wholly vested in the Shakerleys in the reign of Henry VII, and Hulme Hall was for many generations the seat of that family before they moved to Somerford-Radnor.   The hall is occupied as a farm house."


T. A. Coward in Picturesque Cheshire, Sherratt and Hughes, Manchester, 1903, 2nd ed. Methuen, London, 1926 notes:

"From the "Whipping Stocks" I ride down the Holmes Chapel road as far as Rudheath and Allostock, once the home of the Grosvenors.  Very different is the modern farm - Hulme Hall - which stands on the site of the old manor house, from Eaton, where the Duke of Westminster now resides."

Fletcher Moss mentions the house in his Pilgrimages in Cheshire and Shropshire, published in Manchester in 1901 and reprinted by E. J. Morten, Didsbury, 1972.  There is an illustration of the stone bridge on page 27 and Moss reports references to Sir Robert Grosvenor of Hulme in 1386.  He mentions a deed of purchase for Hulme dated 1234 when Gralam de Lostock sold Hulme to Richard son of Ranulph Grossovenator.  This account is not fully consistent with the one by Lysons.  Moss writes:

"There is still a perfect moat at Hulme with a beautiful stone bridge and an old hall containing parts of another much older with immense oaken arches and beams."

 

Given that Moss was writing around 1900, one is puzzled by his comments.  The present buildings on the site look to date from the 19th century and would have been there in Moss's time.  Could it be that Moss confused Hulme Hall with the nearby Holford Hall, which is a moated timber-framed building with a stone bridge over the moat.

There is a short article The Grosvenours of Hulme in Cheshire Sheaf, 3rd series, 3, 1901, 140-143. Hulme is mentioned very briefly in Old Cheshire Families and their Seats, by Lionel M Angus-Butterworth, Sherratt and Hughes, Manchester, 1932, reprinted by E. J. Morten, Didsbury, 1932.

"About 1234, Richard le Grosvenor acquired Holme (sic) a moated house, but it was not until the following century that Sir Robert Grosvenor gained a great addition to his estate by marrying the heiress of Pulford."
 

Cheshire Country Houses, by Peter de Figueiredo and Julian Treuhertz, Phillimore, Chichester, 1988, states:

"The house, now a farm, was the ancient home of the Grosvenors and Shakerleys.  It has been encased in brick but within are a 17th century staircase and medieval timbers.  Ormerod, iii, 153".

 

Family History at Hulme Hall: Grosvenor and Shakerley

The following pedigrees are taken in part from Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 105th edition 1969, with additions from George Ormerod's History of Cheshire.

The first tree shows the complicated manner in which the Shakerley family inherited Hulme from the Grosvenors. The family trees show connections to other prominent local families such as Venables, Fitton, Legh and Booth.

Grosvenor

 

Shakerley

The tree below, showing the family until the end of the 19th century, has connections with many neighbouring families including Venables, Legh and Mainwaring.  Like their near neighbours, the Leicesters of Tabley, the family ran out of male heirs in the 18th century. The heiress, Eliza, married Charles Buckworth and their son, Charles Watkin John Buckworth, then took the name of Shakerley. The Shakerley family lived at Hulme and from the 18th century at a new house in Somerford near Congleton.

 

Somerford Park, the later seat of the Shakerley's, is described in Cheshire Country Houses, by Peter de Figueiredo and Julian Treuhertz, Phillimore, Chichester, 1988. It was a large Georgian house and was demolished in 1926. The centre of the house was of red brick, built about 1720, and two wings were added by C. W. J. Shakerley in the late 18th century. The house was further enlarged by the designer Salvin about 1859-60. The Shakerleys had owned land in Somerford since the reign of Henry III. Bibliography: Burke’s Peerage; J. P. Neale, Views of Seats (2nd Series); and Victoria County History.

Many of the Shakerleys are buried in the Shakerley chapel, in the south aisle of St. Oswald's at Lower Peover, where several memorials may be seen. Shown below are the marble plaque in Latin, dedicated to Geoffrey Shakerley, who died in 1696 and the plaque commemorating his wife, Katherine, the daughter of William Pennington of Muncaster (generation 8 in the tree). There are separate memorials to George Shakerley of Gwersylt and his wife Ann, the daughter of Sir Walter Bagot, shown above in generation 9. She died on 25 July 1767.

 

Memorial spacer Memorial
Memorial to Sir Geoffrey Shakerley
who died in 1696 aged 78.
  Memorial to Sir Geoffrey's first wife
Katherine Shakerley, who died in 1673

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