The Stately Homes of Whittle-le-Woods

We are all familiar with stately homes. Many of us will have trailed through National Trust properties, admiring the clutter of fine old furniture in the public rooms and the reconstructed meals in the kitchens. Still more will have enjoyed television dramas such as Upstairs Downstairs and Downton Abbey, full of upper class shenanigans and rolling-eyed servants. Stately homes – or country houses, as they are more appropriately known – are still ubiquitous in the countryside, although many today are hotels, care homes, schools or apartment blocks rather than the residences of wealthy families. Even such a remote, hilly township as Whittle-le-Woods boasts two (former) country houses: Crook Hall (now Lisieux Hall) and Shaw Hill. In this article I will chart the contrasting histories of these two fine houses and will note how their rise and fall as private residences mirrors that of country houses across Britain.

The British Country House

To describe a pre-twentieth century country house as the residence of a wealthy family tells only part of the story. For a start, the country house was rarely the family’s only residence, or even its main one. Very wealthy families owned more than one country house and those with more modest means at least had a residence in London or another main city, where they may have spent most of their time.  Also, not all country house owners were wealthy; what Philippa Lewis has termed “the rollercoaster of family fortunes” could leave a family relatively impoverished, with their stately pile a financial albatross around their necks. Our stereotype of the stately home owning family is of a dynasty which could trace its ancestry back for centuries and which had lived in the same house (or at least on the same site) for that period of time. While such continuity could occur, overall the ownership of country houses was much more dynamic, with families rising and falling and houses changing hands through good or bad fortune, or the simple fact of the lack of a male descendant.

Prior to the nineteenth century, Britain was a predominantly rural nation and the gentry and aristocracy derived their wealth from owning land. In general, the more land a family owned, the wealthier they were. Some landowners farmed some or all of their land themselves, but most derived their wealth from collecting rents from tenant farmers and other householders. The country house was the headquarters of the estate as well as being its symbolic centre. From there, the landowner or his agent would collect rents and keep the tenantry in order. The richer the estate, the larger and more elaborate the country house; they were expressions of power and status as much as, or sometimes more than, places to live. Whittle's country houses were both centres of estates, which included home farms that directly provided income from produce (and helped feed the household) and outlying farms in the township and elsewhere, that provided rental income.

 The appearance of country houses changed over the centuries. The earliest were likely to be motte and bailey castles, established by Norman or Plantagenet noblemen granted land following the Conquest. These were replaced by medieval “moated manors”, often timber-framed and featuring a Great Hall where the Lord of the Manor held court (Rufford Old Hall is a well-preserved local example). Tudor and Stuart houses (such as Astley Hall or Houghton Tower) were more elaborate and in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the taste for classical architecture became widespread. Country house owners were always keen to modernise and many houses were altered many times. Much rebuilding took place in the nineteenth century, sometimes with more ostentation than taste.

The gentry were the nation’s elite and were therefore far less numerous than the population as a whole. At the same time, country estates and related houses were ubiquitous throughout Britain. B.G. Blackwood has calculated that there were 774 landed gentry families in the (pre-1974) county of Lancashire in the seventeenth century and Adrian Tinniswood estimates that there are still 200 country houses in Lancashire today, though he does not say whether these are still private residences.

Marc Girouard tells us that the “golden age” of the country house was the hundred years from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth centuries. A number of factors influenced this. Firstly, the vast improvements in roads that followed the establishment of turnpike trusts made country houses much more accessible to their city-based owners and their guests. The growth of the railways from the 1840s further improved the accessibility of country seats. Secondly, the romantic movement of the early nineteenth century caused the countryside to seem more attractive to the city-based gentry than previously and they became more motivated to visit their country houses, or to make them their main residences. Thirdly, the nascent industrial revolution bought more money into landed estates, especially in areas where coal or other minerals could be mined for profit, or where rents could be derived from growing urbanisation. Also, the growing class of merchants and industrialists were keen to use their money to join the gentry and “purchasing an estate” became the ultimate goal of many a self-made man.

Country houses did not exist in a vacuum and a key function was as a focus for socialising and enhancing the owners' status. The British class system implied that the gentry could only socialise with others of their own class and country living had the potential to limit social opportunities. Families created a social life by making “calls” on neighbouring country houses, or by holding weekend house parties, when friends and family members were invited to stay. A large house party of course implied a large house with many bedrooms to accommodate guests; it is unsurprising that so many country houses were readily converted into hotels (or care homes), as that was essentially what they had always been.

The changing function of country houses also led to new arrangements of “public” rooms. The medieval great hall atrophied into a modest entry lobby. The dining room became the most formal room in the house; the ritual of “dressing for dinner” persisted into the twentieth century. The drawing room was the main room for receiving visitors during the day and after dinner the ladies withdrew there while the gentlemen remained in the dining room to drink port, smoke and talk politics. There would also be a generally well-stocked library and in large houses a billiards room and a smoking room for underemployed young gentlemen.

Outdoors was as important as indoors. Country houses developed extensive grounds, or parks, carefully landscaped for maximum impact and sometimes necessitating moving roads or even (as at Tatton Park, near Knutsford) whole villages. Landscape designers such as Lancelot “Capability” Brown (1716 – 1783) and later Humphrey Repton (1752 – 1818) were commissioned by wealthy clients to produce vistas that met the tastes of the times, employing views, water features and plantations of trees to effect. Formal gardens and shrubberies provided opportunities for taking the air.

Trees were also central to the principal recreations of the (male) gentry: hunting and shooting. The gamekeeper was an important member of the staff of a country estate, ensuring that the Lord of the Manor and his guests did not get bored through want of game birds to shoot. While the men occupied themselves in this way, their ladyfolk spent their time managing the household, making and receiving calls, visiting tenants in need, practicing music or with “work”, which meant needlework; producing garments for the family or for charity.

Male members of the family occupied themselves variously when not out with their guns. Some took an active role in managing their estates and the Home Farm that produced much of the big house’s food, while others left these tasks to their land agents and farm bailiffs. Some dabbled in politics and became Members of Parliament; prior to the twentieth century the large majority of MPs were from the landed classes. Most recognised their responsibilities to the local community and ladies would often spend some of their time in charitable work, while gentlemen would endow churches and schools and took a role in local government as Justices of the Peace. Elder sons, who would inherit the estate on the death of their fathers, needed no paid occupation, but younger sons had to make their own way by joining one of the limited range of professions deemed suitable: the Church, the Law or the Armed Forces. Making a career in “trade” was frowned upon as being beneath the dignity of a gentleman, but the gentry were not averse to financial speculation and many made (or lost) fortunes through the stock market. Daughters were expected to make good marriages (i.e. those that bought in a good dowry or new income to the estate or enhanced the family’s name and connections) and those who did not sometimes felt a degree of pressure that they were a drain on the family fortunes.

Country houses were run by servants. There was a strict hierarchy, with male servants (valets, footmen, grooms, coachmen) being managed by the butler and female servants (cooks, laundry maids, housemaids) being overseen by the housekeeper. The invention in the late eighteenth century of the bell-pull allowed servants’ areas to be separated from the main living areas – previously servants had to be ever-present in case they were needed. Servants would often outnumber their masters and mistresses by a considerable ratio.

By the twentieth century, many country houses were beginning to decline. Historians identify three main reasons for their eclipse. First, the value of land began to decline from the eighteen-eighties as competition from foreign food imports reduced income from agriculture and hence rents. Then in 1894 estate duty was introduced. This was a tax on the value of land (the forerunner of modern inheritance tax) and reduced the value of estates passed on after a proprietor’s death. Lloyd George’s budget of 1909 further raised taxes on inherited land, the revenue helping to fund the introduction of the state pension. Finally, the Great War had the effect of making servants less easy to recruit and more expensive to employ, through creating more lucrative alternative employment opportunities. Gradually, country houses and estates became too expensive for all but the wealthiest or most enterprising to afford and many of the gentry sold up and left their birthright behind.

The Country Houses of Whittle-le-Woods

So how did the country houses of Whittle-le-Woods fit in with this overview of the British country house system? Our two country houses, Crook Hall (the name it was known by when it was a family residence) and Shaw Hill, stand adjacent to each other on a ridge than runs south-north from Chorley to the south side of Preston. There was once a line of country houses along this ridge, stretching from Gillibrand Hall, through Astley Hall, Shaw Hill, Crook Hall and Clayton Hall to Cuerden Hall in the north. They were so sited to benefit from the status that their prominent position afforded; the spectacular view to the west across the Lancashire plain to the sea and the opportunities for socialisation with one’s own class that proximity allowed. None are private residences today and as we will see later, they have had different afterlives in the twentieth century. For now we will concentrate on the middle two houses in the line.

The place to start for information about the history of a country house is the relevant entry in the Victoria County History (VCH). This was an enterprise that commenced in 1899 to produce an encyclopaedic history of Britain, divided into counties, parishes and townships. The resulting text is available in its entirety online. In keeping with the mores of the times, the historians who compiled the VCH concentrated on describing the histories of the leading families in each township. So by accessing the VCH entry for Whittle-le-Woods, we can read potted histories of the Crook family of Crook Hall and the Crosse family of Shaw Hill. Both are convoluted and we won’t repeat all the details in this article. We will however make them the starting points for our accounts of these two fine old houses.

Crook Hall

The VCH tells us that the Crook family held land in Whittle-le-Woods from at least the thirteenth century but in the mid-sixteenth century their land was sold in two ‘moieties’ to members of the Clayton family. The resulting estates were known as Old and New Crook. A hundred years later, William Crook, a member of the Crook family who owned and farmed land in Coppull, bought both moieties, reuniting the estate. The terms Old and New Crook remained, being applied to the estate’s two main dwellings. Old Crook was a large farmhouse in the west of the estate, near to the ancient road to Leyland (known as Leyland Lane in the nineteenth century and now Dawson Lane). In 1666 it was the largest house in Whittle, having nine hearths. New Crook was a grander house a quarter of a mile east of Old Crook. While the early histories are not certain, it is probable that Old Crook was the site of the medieval manor house of the Crook estate, while New Crook was built in the late seventeenth century, either by William Crook or his son Samuel, who inherited the estate. This Samuel Crook was Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire in 1717 and was unfortunately killed in a duel in 1727, following a dispute about a right of way. His son Samuel Crook II inherited the estate and died in 1776 aged 82, being commemorated with a plaque in Leyland Parish Church. The estate continued to be passed from father to son for the rest of the eighteenth century – four generations of Samuel Crook in all. New Crook (or New Crook Hall, or later simply Crook Hall) was rebuilt in the early nineteenth century by Samuel Crook IV and by 1917 it had five entertaining rooms and fifteen bedrooms and dressing rooms. Old Crook continued as a separate farmhouse, but was demolished in the 1970s.

The former Crook Hall is private property, so we can't get a clear view of the impressive south front, with its row of Ionian columns. Some 17th century features remain, but most of the building dates from the early 19th century.

The site of Old Crook, which in its latter years was a farmhouse. It was demolished in the mid-twentieth century.

The establishment of New Crook apparently led to the re-siting of the road from Whittle to Leyland. Drivers on Dawson Lane today must negotiate two right-angled bends as the road passes Crook Hall. It appears that the road originally took a more direct route, past the site of the future New Crook and just to the south of Old Crook. When New Crook was built, the road was diverted a couple of hundred yards southwards, to set New Crook back and to allow for an impressive drive from the road to its entrance. Further west, the road had to return to its original route by means of the right-angled bends, to avoid encroaching on other landowners’ properties (see diagram).

The modern course of Dawson Lane (previously Leyland Lane) embraces a number of bends as it passes Crook Hall. It was apparently diverted when Crook Hall was built, to give the new house more land to its south side. The previous course of the road can be traced, via a footpath to the east of Crook Hall and an access road to the west.

The long drive that today leads from Dawson Lane to Lisieux Hall (the moden name of Crook Hall) was made possible by the diversion of the road when the Hall was built

One of the right-angled bends that drivers on Dawson Lane must endure. The road's route was due to avoiding land owned by Sir William Farringdon of Worden Hall in Leyland. The original course of the road to Leyland followed the moden access road to Lisieux Hall, on the right of the picture. The house in the background is Oak Cottage, in the latter 19th century it was the residence of John Edmonson, Land Agent of the Shaw Hill estate

Samuel Crook IV was not able to enjoy his rebuilt house for long, as he died in 1806 and the estate passed to his sister, Cordelia Elizabeth Crook. Two years later she married Samuel Freeman, a landowner from Cheshire and the couple moved away, living mainly in Chester. Cordelia Elizabeth was the last member of the Crook family to live in Crook Hall.

Samuel and Cordelia Freeman had one son, named John Crook Freeman. He married Anne Ackerley, from a Gloucestershire landed family and settled in Clifton, becoming a steward of Bristol races. He had one daughter, Frances Elizabeth Eleanor Freeman but died in 1838 at the young age of 27, when the Crook estate reverted to his mother, Cordelia Elizabeth Freeman until her death in 1856.

Frances was brought up by her mother's family and in the late 1850s spent time at the fashinable spa town of Cheltenham, in search of a suitable husband. She found one, marrying a serving army officer, Major Gould Weston in 1860. She apparently followed him to his stations abroad. On June 16th 1861, her first son, Chamberlayne Heron Weston was born prematurely in Therapia, in modern Turkey but died next day. Three days later, Frances herself died and the line of descent from William Crook abruptly ceased.

Major Gould Weston endowed another commemorative plaque in Leyland Church to his wife and son and then a year later married Jane Hunter, a member of a wealthy Scottish family and took the name Hunter-Weston. Thus did old money perpetuate itself in the golden age of country houses.

It is not clear who took ownership of the Crook estate following Cordelia Freeman’s death but by the end of the nineteenth century the Crook family had sold it on. For the whole of its time as a private residence following Cordelia’s marriage in 1808 it was leased to a succession of families. It was a working farm as well as a gentleman’s residence and in the 1830s and 1840s it was in the possession of John Brackenrig, a farmer. He was succeeded by Thomas Tebbitt and then by John Blundell, a member of a prominent landowning family from Merseyside. (All the gentlemen named in this article married and sired children, but we know little of their wives beyond their occasional forays into charity work or church fetes). Blundell described himself as a gentleman and a Justice of the Peace, but he also took an active role in the farm, winning prizes at agricultural shows for his livestock. The Blundells were devout Catholics and in his will John Blundell noted that he need not make provision for two of his daughters as they were both nuns.

Following John Blundell’s departure in 1869, Crook Hall shifted from old money to new. Its next occupant was Theodore Julius Hare, who was a director of a railway company. He lived there for twenty years before making way in 1890 for Carlton Cross (not to be confused with the Crosse family of Shaw Hill), who was managing director of a Bolton cotton spinning company. Despite his manufacturing background, Carlton Cross was keen to adopt the lifestyle of a country gentleman and became Master of the Aspull Hunt. In 1905 he retired to Gillingham in Dorset, taking a grand house named Wyke Hall and becoming a pillar of the local community. He did however have to suffer the twin tragedies of his son being killed in France in 1918 and his wife being killed in a road traffic accident a few years later.

He was replaced as master of Crook Hall by his cousin James Carlton Cross, also a cotton spinner, who also took over from him as Master of the Aspull Hunt. Then in 1917, Crook Hall passed to J.C.H. Hollins. He was the younger son of a Baronet and had “business interests in the cotton trade” (he owned Greenfield Mill in Chorley), but his first love was sport. He played cricket briefly for Lancashire and was a director of Preston North End football club. He also occasionally organised “country house cricket” matches at Crook Hall, engaging Lancashire professionals to take on local sides.

By now, the financial storm clouds were beginning to gather over Britain’s country houses. Farming was becoming less and less profitable, while the growing population, including an expanding middle class, was leading to increased demands for building land. After the Great War, a large house was built on the estate’s land adjacent to Dawson Lane, joining other large commuter houses that were being built in “ribbon developments” along the Chorley to Preston main road (now the A6). It was named Gelston (now called Gelston Manor and a private nursery). In 1930, J.C.H. Hollins decided he could no longer afford to keep Crook Hall and it was put up for sale, Hollins and his family moving to Gelston. He was to die there in 1938, at the early age of 48.

Gelston, the large modern house built in the early 1920s on a corner of land on the Crook Hall estate. JCH Hollins downsized to there from Crook Hall in 1930. It is now known, more grandly, as Gelston Manor and houses a nursery

Although Crook Hall was advertised for sale as a gentleman’s residence, with "two excellent cottages, suitable for a chauffeur and gardener", it was purchased by the Brothers of Charity, which is a Cathoic religious foundation that began in Ghent, Belgium in 1807 and which provide cares for people with learning disabilities. Crook Hall was renamed Lisieux Hall, commemorating St Therese of Lisieux. It is still in their ownership and acts as the charity’s headquarters, with one wing as a residential care home.

Shaw Hill

The Crosse family who built Shaw Hill and owned it throughout its time as a country house was another ancient family, but were relative newcomers to Whittle-le-Woods. During the reign of Edward I the family was settled around Wigan, then acquired lands at Liverpool, founding Crosse Hall (long demolished). Several members of the family were mayors of Liverpool during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In 1411, Roger del Crosse, acquired land between Chorley and Healey Nab and built another Crosse Hall, which was sited near modern-day Cowling Brow. This house remained one of the family’s residences until the eighteenth century, when in 1750 Thomas Crosse (1722 – 1802) married Sarah Ashburner of Preston, who brought with her land in Whittle-le-Woods. By adding to this land with other purchases, Thomas Crosse was able to establish a new estate and to build a grander country house to join the others on the ridge between Chorley and Preston. He named his new house Shaw Hill. Crosse Hall was let out to tenants and during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it became run down. It was demolished in the mid-twentieth century and the site is now a modern housing estate.

Thomas Crosse was succeeded as master of Shaw Hill by his son Richard (died 1822). In 1806 Richard Crosse inherited an estate at Adlington, Cheshire (not to be confused with Adlington near Chorley) from his cousin Charles Legh. This estate was presumably worth more than the Shaw Hill estate as Richard decamped there and changed his name to Legh. Shaw Hill passed on his death to his daughter Anne Mary (1806 – 1848).

In 1828 Anne Mary Crosse married Thomas Bright Ikin (1797-1886). He came from “trade”. His father, Thomas Ikin, had been a wealthy merchant in Leeds, presumably in the then-thriving wool textile trade. Thomas Ikin senior was mayor of Leeds in 1803 and “purchased an estate” based on Leventhorpe Hall, Swillington, to the east of the city. On his marriage into the Crosse family, Thomas Bright Ikin legally changed his name to Thomas Bright Crosse (hereafter abbreviated to TBC). The merchant’s son had permanently joined the ranks of the gentry.

TBC plunged into public life in his adopted county. He became a Justice of the Peace and in 1837 he served as High Sherriff of Lancashire. He was a long-standing Deputy Lieutenant of the county. In 1841 he was elected as Conservative M.P. for Wigan but a few months later his election was declared void due to irregularities in the voting procedure, with allegations of voter intimidation and other shap practices – it is unclear whether TBC was aware of any shenanigans that Tory party supporters may have indulged in. Despite his family background in “trade” he was committed to the interests of landowners and farmers and in 1844 he took part in an “Anti-league” meeting, objecting to the Prime Minister Robert Peel’s proposed repeal of the Corn Laws, which would usher in free trade in agriculture. In 1847 he considered standing for parliament again in Wigan, but as a local commentator scornfully observed, such a committed supporter of the interests of country landowners would not be welcome in a manufacturing town and he did not pursue the nomination. Thus ended his dabbling in national politics. Despite his identification with the landed class, TBC was not averse to financial speculation in modern industry and in the 1840s he became a shareholder in the Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle railway company.

TBC was also not averse to a fight. In 1832 he fought a duel with pistols with Henry Hawarden Fazakerley, master of Gillibrand Hall, on a field near Chorley. The seconds were two other local landowners, T. H. Hesketh of Rufford and F. H. Standish of Duxbury Park. Both missed with their first shots, at which point the seconds persuaded them that honour had been satisfied, to which TBC and Fazakerley acquiesced, "without any reconciliation taking place". Then in 1839 he got into a squabble with two men who were drinking in the Crosse's Arms public house, opposite Shaw Hill. One of the men grabbed the bridle of TBC's horse and when he wouldn't let go, TBC hit him with his riding whip. A scuffle ensued, which led to the two men being fined at a special magistrates' meeting. Needless to say, TBC was not repimanded, despite striking the first blow.

In 1846, he had Shaw Hill rebuilt. The architect was Charles Reed, from Birkenhead and the resulting building forms the central block of the present Shaw Hill hotel. It is of three storeys: on the ground floor was an entrance hall, which doubled as a billiards room (now the hotel reception area), a dining room, drawing room and a library. Bedrooms were up a fine central flight of stairs, that still exists and the kitchens, “offices” and servants’ quarters were in two wings that extended behind the main building. It is likely that the grounds were remodelled at the same time. Wikipedia and other sources state that the grounds were the work of the garden designer William Sawrey Gilpin (1761-1843), a nephew of the artist William Gilpin and an advocate of the “picturesque” style promoted by his uncle and designers such as Humphrey Repton. Certainly the grounds bear some features of Gilpin’s style, such as the long terrace running along the western front, the irregularly shaped plantations of trees around the edges of the park and the removal of the main entrance from the western to the northern side of the house, to allow an uninterrupted view across the park from the drawing and dining rooms. Other Gilpinesque features were present in the formal gardens and shrubbery that extended from the south side of the house, but which have now been covered over. However, an academic paper on Gilpin’s life and work by Sophieke Piebenga does not list Shaw Hill among his commissions - and he died three years before the house was rebuilt. Instead, Piebenga suggests that Gilpin may have worked on Shaw Hall, which was the name by which Worden Hall in Leyland was then known. The identity of Shaw Hill’s garden designer remains a mystery.

The impressive north front of Shaw Hill with its row of Roman Doric columns. The entrance was moved to the north from the west front during the 1846 rebuilding

The south front and the semi-circular bay on the west front. Note the large windows on the ground floor, designed to make the most of the view over the grounds

Shaw Hill in the 19th century

This painting, which hangs in one of the lounges in Shaw Hill hotel, appears to depict Shaw Hill as part of a rural Arcadia, however it does not reflect the actual layout of the grounds or the surrounding landscape

TBC’s wife Anne Mary died in 1848, aged just 42, having borne nine children, two of whom died in infancy. TBC did not remarry. His heir was his eldest son Thomas Richard Crosse (1829-1897), who was an officer in the North Lancashire regiment, reaching the rank of Colonel. He married Lady Mary Castle-Stuart, daughter of a Scottish Earl and had two daughters (Lady Crosse Drive off Town Lane in Whittle is presumably named after Lady Mary). At least two other of TBC’s sons were regular army officers, while some of his daughters made “good” marriages.

The fine central staircase survives from Thomas Bright Crosse's time

The stork motif on the staircase comes from the Crosse family crest

The view from the drawing room across the terrace and grounds

TBC and his sons kept houses in London, but Shaw Hill appears to have been TBC’s main residence for much of his long life. Like all country houses, Shaw Hill was run by servants. Census returns show that in 1871, when the widowed TBC and three of his adult children were occupying the house, no fewer than thirteen servants were in residence: the butler, John Chipchase; the housekeeper, Jane Hunt; the cook, Sarah Weightman; a footman, a groom, a lady’s maid, a laundry maid, three housemaids, a dairy maid, a still-room maid and a kitchen maid. Other important employees lived nearby, including George Berry, the gamekeeper; Thomas Henderson, the farm bailiff and John Edmonson, the Land Agent, who looked after the business of the estate and oversaw the collection of rents from the surrounding farms. We do not know what TBC's general attitude towards his servants was, but John Chipchase remained his butler for over twenty years and TBC left money to two former servants in his will.

A symbol from the Crosse family arms depicted on a house on Preston road, opposite Shaw Hill. A pub on the corner was once named The Crosses Arms. Interestingly, the nearby Alms Houses were not endowed by the Crosse family, but by Susanna Brooke of Astley Hall

As he moved into his eighties, TBC may have become infirm. In 1880 it was his heir Thomas Richard Crosse who attended the ceremony to lay the foundation stone of the new parish church in Whittle-le-Woods, which his family had helped to finance (in attendance was Theodore Julius Hare, from Crook Hall, who was a churchwarden). In his last couple of years TBC lived in London, presumably with one of his sons and died there in 1886, aged 89.

Thomas Richard Crosse did not go to live in Shaw Hill, preferring London life. He died in 1897, aged 68 and left the estate in his will to his daughter, Kathleen Mary (1861-1959). He stipulated that if she married, her husband should adopt the name of Crosse in order to benefit financially from the estate. But Kathleen never married and never lived in Shaw Hill, instead residing for many years in Caterham in Surrey, dying at the grand age of 98.

In 1891 Shaw Hill was empty apart from a skeleton staff of servants. It was then occupied by John Whittaker, who had succeeded John Edmonson as Land Agent for the Shaw Hill estate. Previously widowed, he lived in the big house with a staff of servants (and latterly with his second wife, Constance, almost 40 years his junior) until his death in 1924. Following his death, the whole Shaw Hill estate was put up for sale. The outlying farms were presumably bought by the farmers who worked them, following the twentieth century trend for estates to be split up through tenants becoming owner-occupiers. Shaw Hill itself and its grounds were bought by a partnership of a local solicitor, John B. Kevill and his sisters, as a property speculation. They built luxury houses on the formal gardens and the home farm and sold them off for a profit. They made a golf course on the park and converted the house into the clubhouse. Thus ended Shaw Hill’s 150 years as a country estate.

After the Second World War, the golf club was expanded into a hotel. New wings were built on the north side, to house a swimming pool and leisure centre and on the south, to form a restaurant and function rooms. This is how we see Shaw Hill today.

Conclusion

We noted earlier that Crook Hall and Shaw Hill were members of a line of country houses that ran along the ridge that links Chorley and Preston. We will conclude this article by relating what became of these houses and their grounds:-

Gillibrand Hall is now a care home for older people, awkwardly sited in the middle of a modern housing estate that covers its grounds.

Astley Park is owned by Chorley Council and is a museum and gallery. The grounds are a public park.

Shaw Hill is a country house hotel and golf club.

Crook Hall, now named Lisieux Hall, is the headquarters of a charity that works with people with learning disabilities and includes a care home. The grounds are still a working farm.

Clayton Hall, having been let out to tenants for many years, fell into disrepair and despite being a listed building was demolished in the 1970s. The site is a scheduled ancient monument. Part of the grounds have been used for sand quarrying and are now a landfill site.

Cuerden Hall is another care home and the grounds form part of Cuerden Valley Park.

So none of these former estates are now private residences. Their fates match those of hundreds of country houses across Britain. Some will feel nostalgia for the romance associated with country houses. More may feel that the extreme inequality and the “upstairs downstairs” snobbery that too often prevailed between landowners and those who lived and worked on their land was indefensible. Still others may feel that one form of inequality has been replaced in Britain by another…but that’s another story!

Sources Used

Newspaper articles available at The British Newspaper Archive

Census returns available at UK Census Online 

1921 census available at Findmypast  

Tithe maps available at Lancashire Archive, Preston.

Historic Ordnance Survey maps available at Old Maps
Victoria County History of Lancashire: Township of Whittle-le-Woods
Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry, Volume 1 (1847). Available from Google Books
Listed Buildings in Whittle-le-Woods, Chorley, Lancashire (British Listed Buildings)
Blackwood B The Catholic and Protestant Gentry of Lancashire during the Civil War Period. 
Crooks F Notes on the early Crooks of Crook Hall, Whittle-le-Woods
Girouard M (1978) Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History. New Haven: Yale University Press
Hodgkinson K (1991) Whittle & Clayton-le-Woods: A Pictorial Record of Bygone Days. Chorley: CKD Publications.
Lewis P (2014) Everyman's Castle: The story of our cottages, country houses, terraces, flats, semis and bungalows. London: Frances Lincoln Publishers
Sophieke Piebenga, "William Sawrey Gilpin (1762–1843): picturesque improver" in Garden History 22:2 (Garden History Society, 1994)
Tinniswood A (2016) The Long Weekend: Life in the English Country House between the Wars. London: Jonathan Cape