Rev. R. W. Bosanquet, A.M., on Rock Hall. 59 



who is usually considered the last of the Norman kings. 

 Now, it appears to me very improbable that a chapel of so 

 finished and ornamented a kind as this must have been 

 when first it was built, should have been placed in so poor 

 and insignificant a hamlet as Rock, unless there had been 

 an inhabited mansion here by which the population would 

 be increased, and additional population encouraged, as well 

 as architectural beauty in the chapel appreciated and valued. 

 We must not go off to the subject of the chapel at present, 

 but one may, I think, observe that the quality of the building 

 of ecclesiastical edifices is in almost all instances influenced 

 by the wealth and taste of those for whose use they are 

 designed ; and Rock chapel in its pristine beauty must have 

 indicated the vicinity of some who had both money and taste 

 to bestow upon it. 



Now, to return for a short time to our mansion, I am well 

 aware that professional architects, and others who have a 

 good knowledge of the different styles of ancient buildings, 

 are of opinion that there is nothing in the distinctive archi- 

 tectural features of " The Old Hall " that indicates any great 

 antiquity. I am told that, neither the door-head and jambs 

 of the low door on the east side, over which the Salkeld arms 

 and legend are placed, nor the corresponding parts in the 

 principal doorway by which we now enter, indicate any 

 greater antiquity than the time of Elizabeth ; and that if we 

 were to judge of the date of the whole by those marks, that 

 must be taken to be the date of the mansion. 



Having already stated reasons for believing that there was 

 a mansion here at a very early date, I will not go into that 

 subject again, but I will just observe that there is a great 

 reason to suppose from the fact of the Salkelds, probably 

 Col. Salkeld himself, having placed their arms and legend 

 over the head of the low door on the east front, and having 

 also placed at least three sun-dials, each of them bearing 

 their arms and a date, on the different fronts of the house, 

 that they made considerable improvements, if not additions, 

 to the house ; and the style of those ornamental portions to 

 which I have alluded, points them out as especially likely to 

 have been added by them. The Salkeld family appear to 

 have reigned from 1620 to 1705, and though the colonel 

 himself, as we shall have occasion to notice more particularly 

 presently, was out in the Civil war of the period for many 

 years, and, as his monument tells us, went over to Ireland 



