WEST DERBY HUNDRED 



CROSS HALL may have taken its name from a 

 cross erected here by the Burscough canons. The 

 boundaries are detailed in the early charter of Bur- 

 scough Priory. 1 A later deed, dated 1229 and 

 entitled ' charter of the rent of Cross Hall,' grants 

 an annual rent of 2*. from this land, payable by 

 Roger and Reginald of the Cross and their successors 

 on behalf of Richard de Lathom.* The tenants 

 seem to have been Welshmen ; they are called 

 le Waleys, and were perhaps kinsmen of the Aughton 

 family. Richard le Waleys was said by the prior of 

 Burscough to have erected a horse mill within the 

 latter's ' Land of the Cross ; ' but the parties came to 

 an arrangement by which Richard acknowledged the 

 prior's title and received the mill as tenant at a rent 

 of lid? Another agreement, made about 1280, 

 allowed the prior certain rights of way over Richard 

 le Waleys' land. 4 



In 1309 Richard le Waleys of the Cross, the 

 younger, complained that William de Codesbecke, 

 Robert of the Cross the elder, and Adam his 

 brother, had disseised him of his free tenement in 

 Lathom ; the estate had been mortgaged to Eustace 

 de Codesbecke, 5 deceased, whose debt had not been 

 paid. 6 The Cross family retained an interest in the 



ORMSKIRK 



place to the end of the fourteenth century, the lords 

 of Lathom being superior to them as tenants of the 

 prior of Burscough.' 



Afterwards it appears to have reverted to the Stanleys 

 as successors to the Lathoms, and in the accounts 

 already quoted may be noticed the rent of 3/. paid to 

 the prior of Burscough. It came into the ownership 

 of the earls of Derby together with other lands of the 

 priory. 8 A junior branch of this family had Cross 

 Hall on lease from the earl, 9 and Sir Thomas Stanley 

 of Bickerstaffe was still holding it in 1653. 10 



Sir Thomas Stanley's eldest son was ancestor of the 

 earls of Derby. His second son, Peter," was father of 

 Thomas Stanley of Cross Hall, high sheriff in 1 7 1 8," 

 who died in 1733," and to whose son Charles the 

 tenth earl of Derby bequeathed Cross Hall." His male 

 issue failing it devolved, in virtue of the terms of the 

 bequest, on the issue of Dr. Thomas Stanley, rector 

 of Winwick, the present owner being Mr. Edward 

 James Stanley. 



Apparently adjoining the estate of Cross Hall 

 was a messuage called Cross Place, in Westhead. 

 This was held until the end of the fourteenth century 

 by .the Cross family, and in the succeeding century 

 passed to the Woodwards of Shevington. It is now 



255 



