Picture of Little Moreton Hall
Caption: Little Moreton Hall Cheshire, UK
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Caption: Building work on the present-day Little Moreton Hall near Congleton in Cheshire began in 1504, but the Moreton family had lived in the area since at least the thirteenth century.
The men of the family had the happy knack of marrying wealthy heiresses. They also knew when to purchase land, making major acquisitions after the Black Death in 1348 when prices fell. By the early sixteenth century William Moreton was ready to show off his wealth and influence (in Cheshire at least) with a grand house.
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Caption: The North Range was the first part of the house to be built. William Moreton's son, also called William, remodelled the North Range in 1559, adding a bay window. This is commemorated in an inscription that runs along the top of the windows.
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Caption: In the North Range you will find the parlour. In the Georgian period wood panelling was added to the walls. During the 1970s an electrician who was undertaking some work had reason to remove the panelling. To the surprise of everyone what he found underneath was that the walls had been painted in a way to imitate panelling. Around the top was a cartoon telling the story of Susanna and the Elders. These pictures were drawn on paper and pasted to the walls.
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Caption: In the Withdrawing Room you will find Queen Elizabeth I's coat-of-arms. According to our tour guide, the family had no connection with Royalty at all, but a statement such as this on the wall fooled visitors into forming a connection between the Moretons and the monarchy.
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Caption: Also in the Withdrawing Room is a rebus in the stained glass windows. An animal with its mouth open sits above a barrel. Maw is the old English word for the jaws of a wild animal and a barrel can also be called a tun. Put the two together and you get mawtun, i.e. Moreton.
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Caption: In the Guests' Hall are four consoles. One has been dated to the 1660s and it is thought that they were added to provide extra support due to the pressure being put on the house by the weight of the Long Gallery, of which more later.
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Caption: There were four closets, or toilets, in the Garderobe Tower. Peering down the loo (as you do!) you can see the moat that runs around the house. It was common for clothes to be stored in or near garderobes as the ammonia from urine was a powerful disinfectant.
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Caption: The Long Gallery is 21m long and 4m wide. Adding it above the South Range probably seemed like a good idea, but the way that it was executed has played havoc with the rest of the building. The weight was not loaded onto the outer weight-bearing walls and the result is that the building has buckled and bowed.
Prior to 1990, when structural strengthening was carried out, restrictions were placed on the number of visitors who could enter the Long Gallery at any time for fear that it might collapse! Ten people could enter, but they couldn't stand together in groups larger than four.
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Caption: At either end of the Long Gallery you will find two painted plasterworks depicting images from 'The Castle of Knowledge' written by the Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde. Somewhat shamefully, given that I'm a maths student, all I can tell you about Recorde is that he invented the equals sign and introduced algebra to England. Prior to the equals sign you wrote 'is equal to' or something similar.
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Caption: The Upper Porch Room probably demonstrates the most extreme example of how the house has twisted and warped. The fireplace is level but the panelling and the floor slope dramatically.
The overmantle commemorates the marriage in 1329 between John de Moreton and Margaret de Macclesfield, one of those aforementioned rich heiresses!
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Caption: You may be wondering what became of the Moretons? During the English Civil War, beginning in 1642, they backed the wrong side by supporting the King when much of Cheshire backed the Parliamentarians. William Moreton (yes, another one!) was imprisoned and the hall used as billets for the Parliamentary soldiers. William was later released and the hall handed back, but when he died in 1654 he left crippling debts.
From the 1670s the Moretons let the hall out to tenant farmers, but the family gradually died out. In 1892 the last remaining Moreton, an Anglican nun, inherited what was by then a very dilapidated hall. She, in turn, left it to her cousin Charles Abraham, Bishop of Derby, on the proviso that it was never sold.
Charles opened the house to the public and for 6d they could have a tour and a cream tea! By 1938 he felt that he could do no more. The hall needed vast sums of money spending on it and his children didn't want to inherit it. He approached the National Trust and gifted the property to them, and so fulfilled the promise that it would never be sold.
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Caption: There can be few finer examples of a Tudor timber-framed house than Little Moreton Hall. In some ways it probably benefited from the family leaving and installing tenant farmers. There were no future generations to add new wings or remodel the house. Instead we are left with a house constructed in just over one hundred years and giving a real snapshot into sixteenth century style and design.
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Caption: Thanks for reading!
