CHORLEY HALL,

AND OTHER BUILDINGS IN ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD.

I

BY WILLIAM NORBURY.

PROPOSE to notice a few things that lie upon the

surface of the subject, and which, on that account, may, and often indeed do, escape the notice of those who mine deeper; or who, to vary the figure, fish with a longer line in deeper waters.

Such thing as I can

With hearty will, for I will not rebel
Against your lust, a tale will I tell.
Have me excused if I should speak amiss;

My will is good; and lo, my tale is this.

Chorley, or Chorlegh, is one of the six hamlets or townships comprising Wilmslow parish-Styall, Morley, Fulshaw, Chorley, Hough, and Deanrow; or, to take the more recent division into four townships, it is one of the four of Bollin Fee, Pownall Fee, Fulshaw, and Chorley. What is now erroneously called Alderley and Alderley Edge is almost all of it in Chorley and in the Hough, which latter place is the southern part of Bollin Fee. St. Philip's, Chorley, is the designation of the church; and what is now called Alderley village-the road between the railway station and the Trafford Arms-was, fifty years back and later, known as Street-lane-ends, Chorley. For the ancient history of Chorley, and especially of Chorley Hall, I must refer you to

those books which are authorities, as Ormerod's Cheshire, Earwaker's East Cheshire, and others. For the purposes of my paper I shall follow Mr. Earwaker's valuable history, basing my remarks upon it; and I must assume that the reader is generally acquainted with what he gives us therein as the history of Chorley.

But I must here put in a caution, and premise that the chapter headed "Chorley Township" gives us the history of Chorley Hall estate rather than the history of Chorley township. Chorley Hall estate and Chorley township are two very different things; for while Chorley Hall estate has suffered the mutations given in the chapter referred to, Chorley township-Chorley as a part of the manor of Bolyn-has had none of the vicissitudes of the former place, but is to-day what it was six hundred years back, and what it has. been all along, the property of the lord of Bolyn, and a part of his manor. The arms of the present lord of Bolyn, Sir Humphrey de Trafford, swing at the hostelry, in the centre of the place, as they have done for hundreds of years, indeed since the de Traffords became lords of Bolyn, or since there was an inn there. Now all this is quite consistent with the facts, properly arranged, given in Mr. Earwaker's history. I state this at the onset because it is so very natural to mistake Chorley Hall for the manorial hall of the township—an error into which almost all persons fall when first approaching the study of the history of Chorley.

I want now, in the first place, to notice a few points about Chorley Hall estate. I shall not begin with Adam; but if I had a genealogical question in hand I should feel bound to do so, for I like thoroughness in everything; but I shall start at the time this estate was marked off as a distinct and separate part of the township of Chorley, or of the manor of Bolyn.

Mr. Earwaker fortunately, with his usual munificence, gives us a copy of the ancient document by which this was done. Edmund Phiton (or Fitton), lord of Bolyn, in the year 1280 granted "all the land, with its appurtenances, which John de Davenport held of him in the vill of Chorley, to Robert de Downes, who had married Margaret Fitton, his sister." This old Fitton, lord of Bollin, most likely resided at Bollin Hall, Wilmslow, an old manorial hall which stood just at the southern end of the Wilmslow viaduct and which the railway demolished. I remember the old place. It was something like Chorley Hall, an old framed building. The old lord seems to have been a kindly man; for when his sister married Robert of Downes, who like enough had no estate, the lord of Bolyn generously provided the newlywedded pair with a moderate maintenance, giving his sister a slice of his manor lying in Chorley; not the whole of Chorley, or the manorial rights of Chorley, but a suitable slice; what was a decent provision for making the family pot to boil. Now at this time the manor of BolynWilmslow parish-was all one undivided manor (excepting perhaps Fulshaw, with which we are not now concerned), and it was so up to 1421, when the male line of the lords of Bolyn failed, and the manor was divided between two sisters of the late lord, one of whom had married Edmund de Trafford, and the other Robert del Booth. The latter (Booth) was the ancestor of the present Earl of Stamford, and he took the northern and eastern side of the manor, while Trafford had the southern and western portion, Chorley being within and a part of this latter moiety. "Now thus" is Sir Humphrey de Trafford to-day the lord of Bolyn, and of Chorley as a part of that lordship. As a matter of fact, the greater part by far of it now belongs to him; and as to manorial rights, the court-leet of Bolyn has always, from the first, exercised jurisdiction over Chorley, and by far the

lion's share of the waste lands on the common of Great Lindow, abutting on Chorley, is in the hands of the present lord of Bolyn (de Trafford). He is the landlord of most of it; his arms grace the village inn; to his court suit and service are rendered; he nominates its churchwardens; he is its lord. "Gripe, griffin; hold fast." So that, although in Chorley Hall we have a grand specimen of ancient English domestic architecture, and a respectable estate with a peer of the realm for its present owner, we have not a manorial hall, not a lordship, not a township estate. In Mr. Earwaker's book, under the heading "William Davenport," is given in parenthesis a quotation from a Cheshire MS. pedigree, as follows: "He sould the manor of Chorley, and hath now seated himself at Hawne [Hollon]." He never had the manor of Chorley to sell. He sold some of his estates in Chorley-his Chorley Hall estate, and this misled the old genealogist, as it has done others since his time.

In the above-mentioned deed, as quoted by Mr. Earwaker, these words are used in describing what was granted: "All the land and appurtenances which John de Davenport held of me in the vill of Chorley." These words should be borne in mind while I refer to another fact. Mr. Earwaker says, when dealing with the age of Chorley Hall: "These features would point to the early part of the fifteenth century, temp. Henry V. and VI., as the probable date of the erection of this the oldest portion of this building." If he be correct in this surmise-and I do not question his judgment—at the time of this grant by the lord of Bolyn to his sister there was not, at any rate, the present Chorley Hall upon the estate; most probably there was no house at all. These lands and the appurtenances thereto had hitherto been held under the lord of Bolyn, as we are told, by John de Davenport. Who was he? Whence came he? Where is this Davenport from whence he came ?

In 1486, the owner of Chorley Hall, as we further learn from Mr. Earwaker, Robert Hondforth, junior, had an only daughter and heiress named Ann, who immediately before 1495 was married to John Stanley, Esq. This he shows by a charter given; and, by the way, this is the first time the Stanleys get Chorley Hall estate. It soon, however passed from them, for we find that this John Stanley died without issue, and that his widow married Thomas Davenport, son of Ralph Davenport, of Davenport, for a second husband. Now we have seen that in 1280 there was a John of Davenport, who held the land which was afterwards the Chorley Hall estate, under the lord of Bolyn; and that again, about the year 1495, there was a son of Ralph of Davenport. Now the place Davenport, the most ancient seat of the Davenport family, is in the parish of Astbury, about twelve miles distant, and prima facie this is the Davenport meant ; but there is also a Davenport Hall in Chorley, the lands of which adjoin the Chorley Hall lands, near Orrell's Well. May not a branch of the ancient Davenport family have settled here in very early times? and may this not be a reason why John de Davenport held these Chorley Hall lands. in 1280-held them from the lord of Bolyn because they adjoined his estate in Chorley?

This Davenport Hall in Chorley is at this time a large, well-built, substantial brick building of about two hundred years old, or perhaps a little more. I take it that this substantial and comparatively ancient house has replaced a still more ancient mansion. When I first knew it, fifty years ago, its general appearance was much as it is now; but there were evident marks that it had in the past been a place of distinction-from some very old and very fine trees about it, ornamental and otherwise. I have not yet had an opportunity of examining this place for the evidences of a former house; but I mean to do this ere long.