LEYLAND HUNDRED 



LEYLAND 



repeated, that Hoghton Tower was ' built in Queen 

 Elizabeth's reign by one Thomas Hoghton, who 

 translated this manor-house, formerly placed below 

 the hill near unto the water side.' It has been 

 questioned, however, whether the house built by 

 Thomas Hoghton was a new building ' translated ' to 

 the top of the hill from a former site near the river, 

 the theory being put forward that the manor-house 

 of the Hoghtons always stood on its present site and 

 was merely rebuilt by Thomas Hoghton in 1565.' 

 There seems, however, to be no substantial reason for 

 doubting Dr. Kuerden's statement, though no records 

 or remains of an older building at the JDOttom of the 

 hill are known to exist. The evidence of the present 

 building, however, though showing it to have been 

 erected at different times, does not support the view 

 that an older house was rebuilt in Elizabeth's reign, 

 the detail in no part of the structure suggesting an 

 earlier date than the middle or end of the 16th 

 century. Dr. Kuerden's statement seems, too, to 

 warrant acceptance from the fact that in a petition of 

 Thomas Hoghton to the Chancellor of the Duchy as 

 plaintiff in a suit against Barnard Townley, a waller 

 and hewer of stone, and Ralph Holden in 1562-3 

 (5 Eliz.), it is maintained that ' he hath enterprised and 

 begun ' to build a house in his demesne of Hoghton.' 



The extreme length of the buildings from west to 

 east is about 270 ft. and the width 160 ft. The 

 house is of t^vo stories throughout except in the 

 south-east wing and on the south side of the lower 

 courtyard, where it is three stories in height, a 

 difference little marked in the latter instance, however, 

 the drop of the ground making the first floor of 

 the later buildings level with the ground floor of the 

 older parts further east. The walls are of local 

 gritstone, and the roofs, which are covered with 

 stone slates, are picturesquely broken up with gables 

 and chimneys, the gables being ornamented with balls. 



In what year the house was finally abandoned as 

 a residence is not certain, but the addition of a new 

 wing in 1 700 seems to imply that the family continued 

 to live there till well into the 1 8th century. Walton 

 Hall, however, became the chief residence of the 

 Hoghtons before the century was very far ad- 

 vanced, and in 1807 Britton describes Hoghton 

 Tower as falling fast to decay.' At that time the 

 later buildings south of the lower court)'ard were 

 inhabited by ' a few families of the lower class,' ' 

 mostly weavers, and the house continued in this 

 dismantled and dilapidated state throughout the first 

 half of the 19th century. Harrison Ainsworth 

 introduces Hoghton Tower into The Lancashire 

 Witches,^ and. Charles Dickens, \vho visited the building 

 in 1854, made use of it as the background for one of 

 his short tales.' There was a scheme for its restoration 

 about the year 1830 from designs by Webster of 



Kendal, a well-known architect of his day, who did a 

 good deal of work in north Lancashire, but it was 

 happily never carried out,' and it was not till after 

 the succession of Sir Henry de Hoghton to the estates 

 in I 862 that the restoration was begun. The picture 

 of the ruin and decay of the building seems, however, 

 to have been overstated, as the writer of a description 

 of the building as it was in 1857 states that, although 

 the ground floor had been seriously dismantled, ' the 

 whole place might, however, be repaired at a small 

 expense, the account of its dilapidation and rapid 

 decay in Baincs being almost wholly erroneous,' the 

 walls apparently being ' still good ' throughout.* 

 The restoration begun by Sir Henry de Hoghton 

 was continued by Sir Charles and completed in 190 1 

 by Sir James de Hoghton, the architect of the later 

 work being Mr. R. D. Oliver of London. The 

 restoration as now completed is an extremely successful 

 one, all the old features having been retained and 

 the new work following most admirably the spirit 

 of the original builders. 



The house is approached from the west by a long 

 drive up the hillside leading from the high road, now 

 open on each side, but formerly lined with trees, the 

 woods extending to within 400 ft. of the front of the 

 west gateway to a point marked by a low stone wall 

 and tall gate piers, now standing isolated and appa- 

 rently meaningless and inclosing a kind of grass fore- 

 court. The west front, which is the outer wall of 

 the lower courtyard, consists as before stated of a 

 gatehouse and two low embattled towers connected 

 by a curtain wall. The gatehouse, which is 42 ft. 

 long by 1 8 ft. 6 in., has a lofty central embattled 

 tower over the archway flanked by two lower 

 wings of the same height as the detached corner 

 towers, with a room on each side of the gateway, 

 three rooms on the first floor, and another in the 

 upper part of the tower. The western front now 

 forms the only part of the building where the walls arc 

 finished with battlements, though originally no doubt 

 the great tower over the inner archway between the two 

 courtyards would be so built. It is questionable, how- 

 ever, whether the present castellated and even military 

 appearance of the west front is the original design as 

 first built, or intended to be built, as the roofs of the 

 lower portions of the gatehouse are gabled behind 

 the embattled parapet, and a straight joint on each 

 side of the tower seems to show that the parapet was 

 a later addition or afterthought. The north-west 

 angle tower has a similar gabled roof behind the 

 battlements, and there is also the weathering of a gable 

 on all four sides, the building having apparently been 

 originally finished with four stone gables. The south-east 

 tower, which, like its companion, has a room on each 

 floor, has been modernized inside and a lead flat 

 substituted for tjie old roof. The angle towers 



• Joseph Gillow, Misc. (Cath. Rec. 

 Soc), iii, I. 



' Pleadings in the Chancery Court of 

 the Duchy of Lancaster, in Pub. Rec. 

 Office, quoted in Lanes, and dies. Antij. 

 Notes, i, 201, 



' 'Within the last few years the roof 

 of the gallery and some of its walls have 

 fallen prostrate. . . . The building is 

 falling fast to decay and presents to view 

 an object at once picturesque, grand, 

 melancholy and venerable ' ; Britton, 

 Description of Lancashire, 1807. * Ibid. 



' Ainsworth's description, written in 



184.8, speaks of the house as 'consigned 

 to the occupation of a few gamekeepers.' 

 ' Bereft of its venerable timber,' he says, 

 ' its courts grass grown, its fine oak 

 staircase rotting and dilapidated, its 

 domestic chapel neglected, its marble 

 chamber broken and ruinous, its wains- 

 cotings and ceilings cracked and moulder- 

 ing, its paintings mildewed and half 

 effaced, Hoghton Tower presents only 

 the wreck of its former grandeur' ; Lanes. 

 Witches. 



" ' George Silverman's Explanation,' 

 Atlantic Monthly (1865). Dickens calls 



43 



tile house * Hoghton Towers,' and speaks 

 of 'the ancient rooms, many of them 

 with their floors and ceilings falling, the 

 beams and rafters hanging dangerously 

 down, the plaster dropping, the oak 

 panels stripped away, the windows half 

 walled up, half broken.' 



' The drawings are preserved in 

 Hoghton Tower. If the designs had 

 been carried out all the characteristic 

 features of the house would have been 

 destroyed. 



^ A Description of Hoghton Towerf by 

 J. Hescltine, 1857. 



