Hale. 



255 



been a fitting companion even for Speke the ancient 

 baronial residence called the Hutte, about two miles 

 upon the Liverpool side of the village, and lying back a 

 little distance from the turnpike road. The great hall 

 was a hundred feet long by thirty feet wide; scarcely 

 anything is to be seen now beyond some of the grand 

 old windows, an ancient chimneypiece, and the moat, 

 with its drawbridge. Hale Church, like the Hutte, tells 

 of a time when the maps did not insert Liverpool.* The 

 body dates from about the middle of the last century, 

 but the tower is of immemorial age, contemporaneous 

 perhaps with the vast pile at the western extremity of 

 Ormskirk old church, thus with the very earliest ecclesi- 

 astical remains extant in Lancashire. Here, too, we 

 have a beautiful example of the ancient lych-gate. 



Soon after the Restoration the Hutte would seem to 

 have been relinquished as a place of residence by the 

 local family. A new one at all events was built in 

 1674 the Hale Hall of the present day mentioned 

 above as the seat of Colonel Blackburne. Like many 

 another first-class country-house, in style it is substan- 

 tially domestic, extremely comfortable to look at, and no 

 doubt well appointed within; but still neither in outline 

 or physiognomy can it be said to preserve the traditions 

 of any particular school of art. The park is spacious, 

 full of fine trees, including many lindens, so valuable 



* Liverpool was omitted even so late as 1635. Vide Selden's 

 "Mare Clausum, seu de Dominio Maris," p. 239, Chetham Library, 

 Manchester, 



