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Sherdley Old and New Halls

Sherdley Old Hall farmhouse c.1890 - contributed by Rory Hughes-Young (Lord St.Helens)

 

Sherdley Hall in Sutton can be traced back to the early 14th century. However the building and estate that Michael Hughes acquired in 1798 for £3,150 had only been built in 1671 and that date was carved over its front door. It's not known for certain who built it although it's likely to have been one of the Roughley family. It was constructed in an Elizabethan style with gables and grids of mullioned windows and brick chimneys and built from red and yellow sandstone.

One interesting feature of Sherdley Old Hall was that a number of its windows were blocked off in order to escape a window tax which was levied intermittently from 1696. The glass tax was introduced under the snazzily-named 'Act of Making Good the Deficiency of the Clipped Money' in King William III's time. No wonder everyone just called it the Window Tax!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sherdley New Hall photographed by R.G. Brook c.1890 - contributed by Rory Hughes-Young (Lord St.Helens)

 

Hughes decided to retain the somewhat grim-looking old building, which later became a farmhouse and was known as Sherdley Hall Farm, and between 1805-6 he built a new Hall (or 'House') for himself. Hughes had been forced out of his first residence, Sutton Lodge (initially called 'The Tickles'), by the smoke from a new colliery owned by salt proprietor Nicholas Aston of Woolton Hall. It was located on land adjacent to Hughes's and the fumes were threatening to make Sutton Lodge uninhabitable.

A view of Sherdley New Hall c.1890 in winter time - contributed by Rory Hughes-Young (Lord St.Helens)

 

After initially considering relocating to North Wales, Michael Hughes elected to build the mansion of his dreams in Sutton and commissioned architect John Harrison. It became Hughes's pride and joy with great care taken in its interior design. The main building work took place between 1805 and 1806 and the builders made quick progress with the master mason discharged in January 1806. The house was insured for the sum of £2000 and the furniture for £500.

In a letter from London dated February 1st, 1805, Hughes was advised by his relative Sir Robert Williams (1764-1830), to make his new home as "snug and comfortable" as possible and to pay more attention to water closets, carpets and fireplaces than "great uniformity in the building...these are luxuries that all the world like." However, Williams implored Michael Hughes not to show his letter to his brother Rev. Edward Hughes {x-1815}, whose Kinmel Park mansion in North Wales was renowned within the Hughes family both for its magnificence and its great discomfort as a residence.
 

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William Lewis Hughes (1767-1852) was Michael's nephew who was charged with acquiring the furnishings for the new hall and these were brought from London to Liverpool by canal. William wrote to his uncle on July 25th, 1807:

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I do flatter myself that your two rooms will be the neatest and most tasteful in your neighbourhood. I have ordered a neat Lantern for the dining room which will light the room sufficiently without the nuisance of candles on the table to obscure the view of your opposite neighbour...It occurs to me that you have never mentioned how your bells pull. Inform me of this and tell me also whether you want grate and fenders Will and fire irons for the two rooms.

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On December 1st, 1807, William - who in 1831 became the first Lord Dinorben of Kinmel - corresponded again with his uncle at Sherdley Hall. Michael Hughes had clearly been delighted with his nephew's efforts in furnishing his new home:

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I derive great pleasure from knowing that your furniture meets with your and your friends approbation, and tho' I allow the cost will be considerable, yet I hope you will find it compensated in the comfort you will derive from it...the drawing room will of course include some articles of unnecessary adornment to a man, but as I know you will like your female visitants to enjoy every comfort and luxury you can afford them.

 

With Hughes' first wife Ellen having died nine years earlier, widower Michael was in the market for a new wife. Whether it was the posh furnishings of the new Sherdley Hall that helped persuade Edith Mary Brewster-Macpherson, the daughter of a neighbouring Sutton landowner, to marry him isn't recorded but the ceremony took place in 1898.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Standing outside the farmhouse, formerly Sherdley Hall, c.1890- contributed by Rory Hughes-Young

 

The 1901 census provides a snapshot of the downstairs life in the new Sherdley Hall with nine servants recorded. There was a cook, valet, kitchen maid, scullery maid, ladies maid, footman and two housemaids. Plus a curiously-named hall boy as well as a gardener who lived in a separate cottage with his family.

In the St.Helens Reporter's obituary of Michael Hughes, published on August 26th, 1938, they wrote more favourably of the old Sherdley Hall than the more recently-built property:

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The present Sherdley Hall is a somewhat plain building in the Georgian style, and only about a century old, but the old hall now serves as a picturesque farmhouse of Sherdley Hall Farm where Mr. H. Done, the occupier (and himself of ancient lineage), is particularly interested in its antiquity. The old house with its gables and string courses, its mullioned windows, its porch with a nail-studded door on iron hinges, seats on either side, and the date 1671 over the lintel, is all too picturesque to be taken as a farmhouse here within sight of colliery wheels. In his farmhouse of many doors and low-timbered ceilings, Mr. Done has assembled furniture and ornaments pleasantly appropriate to the hall. The bedrooms have old doors obviously fashioned by the adze, and a recess over the porch is the ancient powder-closet, where in times gone by the inhabitants used to powder their wigs.

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An 'adze', incidentally, is a tool for fashioning wood, like an axe. The Reporter article also described the gardens of the new Sherdley Hall in 1938 which included a "curious stone font" which had been brought from Lea Green and which was related to a past unfrocking of a minister. The article said the "historical scandal" dated back to 1722 and the name on the font was John Jolly. Just whether he was the unfrocked cleric or stonemason isn't clear.

 

 

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The old Sherdley Hall farmhouse photographed around 1990 - contributed by Jim Lamb

"Many fine beeches" and other trees were said to occupy the gardens but special mention was made of an old chestnut tree which had its top cut off, which the article claimed "suggested Royalist leaning" in the Civil War days. Apparently, many Royalist landowners decapitated a tree when King Charles was executed.

Like Sutton Hall, the Sherdley Halls were said to have secret underground passages which led to Loyola Hall and also inter-connected with a tunnel from Pheonix House and one from Sutton Monastery. The Sherdley tunnel was filled in and capped with a flat oblong of concrete during the early 1970s. Susan Jones lived in the old servants' quarters in the park during the late 1970s and recalls being shown the cap by park manager Norman Clarke:

Norman showed me the cap, which is at the top end of the first garden in the centre of the park. The first garden was allocated to my flat, so I asked if I could put a greenhouse on the concrete and was told no and why. Norman said that originally it had been stables and the entrance would in his opinion have been disguised in one of the stalls or inside the building's cellar.

The new Sherdley Hall was demolished in 1949 through subsidence, which has been one of the greatest perils that Sutton has had to endure over the past couple of hundred years. Then the old servants quarters were demolished in 1980. However, the remains of the old hall / farmhouse still exists and is a grade 2 listed building. St Helens Council's listing record states:

Farmhouse. Dated 1671 on lintel. Stone with slate roof, brick stacks. 2 storeys with attic, 3 bays; 1st bay is narrow and projects under gable, end bay also projects under gable. Drip moulds over ground and 1st floors, coped gables. Windows have double-chamfered mullions, most of 6 lights but 1st bay has 3-light 1st floor window and blocked 2-light attic window; 3rd bay has ground floor cross-window. Porch has recessed door, which is studded and has strap hinges and latch. Signs of blocked entrance to left of 3rd bay window. Returns have similar fenestration.