Little Moreton Hall
Little Moreton Hall is a Grade I listed half-timbered manor house 4. 5 miles southwest of Congleton in Cheshire, England. Built between 1504 and 1508 for William Moreton, it comprises the Great Hall and the northern part of the east wing. The ground on which the house stands is protected as a Scheduled Monument. The National Trust has restored the house and it is open to the public from April to December each year.
About Little Moreton Hall in brief
Little Moreton Hall is a Grade I listed half-timbered manor house 4. 5 miles southwest of Congleton in Cheshire, England. Built between 1504 and 1508 for William Moreton, it comprises the Great Hall and the northern part of the east wing. The house remained in the possession of the Moreton family for almost 450 years, until ownership was transferred to the National Trust in 1938. The ground on which the house stands is protected as a Scheduled Monument. The National Trust has restored the house and it is open to the public from April to December each year. The name Moreton probably derives from the Old English mor meaning’marshland’ and ton, meaning ‘town’ or’moreton’ The area where the house now stands was named Little Moreton to distinguish it from the nearby township of Moreton-cum-Alcumlow, or Greater Moreton, which was named after the marsh land common in the area. It is also known as Buglawton, meaning the ‘Law town of Bug’ or Bog, after the common law town in the nearby parish ofCongleton, which is also called Bug Lawton. The hall’s sandstone bridge across the moat is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designatedGrade I listed building, and the house has been restored to its former glory. It has been described as ‘lifted straight from a fairy story, a gingerbread house’ and ‘like a stranded Noah’s Ark’ by a National Trust guidebook.
The building is highly irregular, with three asymmetrical ranges forming a small, rectangular cobbled courtyard. The Long Gallery that runs the length of the south range’s upper floor is due to the Long Gallery, built at the same time as the north range, gave the early house an H-shaped floor plan. At its greatest extent, in the mid-16th century, the Little moreton Hall estate occupied an area of 1,360 acres and contained a cornmill, orchards, gardens, and an iron bloomery with water-powered hammers. There are no surviving records of the layout of the original knot garden, so it was replanted according to a pattern published in the 17th century. The Great Hall has two large bay windows looking onto the courtyard, built so close to each other that their abutments abut each other. The east wing was extended to the west in about 1508 to provide additional living quarters, as well as housing the Chapel and Withdrawing Room. In 1546 the original west wing was replaced with a new range on the original housing rooms on the south floor. The south wing was added in about 1560–60 by William Moreton’s son, also called William, and was called the ‘William Moreton’s Hall’ The north range was also replaced in 1562 by William moreton’s son, and he added a new wing to the south in about 1562–60.
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This page is based on the article Little Moreton Hall published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
