BLACKBURN HUNDRED 



BLACKBURN 



Ribble to Sir George Warren, K.B./" in considera- 

 tion of £5,000 and an annuity of ^(^400 during their 

 livesJi 



From Sir George Warren the manor descended, 

 like those of Salesbury and Dincldey, to George 

 second Baron de Tabley, who in 1 866 sold the manor 

 to Henry Ward of Blackburn. It was in 1894 pur- 

 chased by Solomon Longworth, and the following 

 year, the new owner having died, it was sold by his 

 executors to the present lord of the manor, Mr. Joseph 

 Dugdale of Blackburn. The manor is titular only, 

 no courts being held or rights exercised.'^ 



OSBJLDESTON HJLL stands in a low situation 

 close to the left bank of the Ribble, and is approached 

 from the south by a field road which drops with a 

 steep descent in front of the house. The building is 

 now a farm-house, and has been so much patched and 

 altered from time to time and parts allowed to fall 



after an original west wing had been pulled down. 

 The building is of two stories faced with brick and 

 stone, with a good projecting chimney at the east end, 

 but externally has lost most of its original architectural 

 features except in the upper windows of the south 

 gable end. To this original block, in which is pro- 

 bably incorporated the house of the latter part of the 

 1 6th century, though externally patched with brick 

 and otherwise modernized out of all recognition, has 

 been added a small wing at the north-east corner about 

 27 ft. square, standing some 7 ft. beyond the north 

 front and with a smaller gabled projection at the east 

 end facing south, set back behind the chimney of the 

 east wing. At the opposite end of the house, now 

 forming the west wing, is a later two-story stone 

 building 64 ft. in length, the roof of which is slightly 

 lower than that of the main block to which it is 

 attached at the angle, being set back 16 ft. from the 





(Qim^it^s /qio; 



OsBALDESTON HaLL FROM THE SoUTH-EAST 



into SO great a state of dilapidation that it is difficult 

 to determine at all correctly what the original plan of 

 the house was. The main building is now I-shaped 

 with north and east wings, the east wing projecting 

 1 9 ft., but it is possible that there was originally a 

 corresponding wing at the west end and that the plan 

 in the first instance followed the usual type. There 

 is nothing, however, actually to prove that this was 

 so, and a three-light mullioned and transomed window 

 at the west end of the north wing, now mutilated, is 

 against the theory, though the end wall may very well 

 have been rebuilt in stone and the window inserted 



north side of the house. This range of building, which 

 appears to be of 17th-century date, is built of rough 

 stones with quoins at the angles and with stone slated 

 roofs,'' and has a straight frontage to the garden 

 facing east of 55 ft. The west front, however, is 

 broken up by two square bay windows projecting 

 8 ft., with a chimney between corbelled out slightly 

 below the level of the first floor. The bays have low 

 mullioned windows of five lights on the ground floor, 

 that at the south end having also three lights on the 

 return, but they are now, along with the chimney, 

 roofed over with continuous lean-to roofs, and whether 



7° In March 1766 Daniel Wilson, clerk, 

 John Stopford, gent., George Wilson, esq., 

 Anne Sybelle his wife and Mary Sybelle 

 Harrison, widow, passed by fine to John 

 Charles Crowle and Roger Wilson, esqs., 

 the manor of Osbaldeaton with lands there 

 and in Balderston and Ribchester ; Pal. 



of Lane. Feet of F. bdle. 375, m. ++ ; 

 Plea R. 603, m. 2 d. ; and in 1774 George 

 Wilson, esq., and Anne Sybelle his wife 

 passed the same estate, then described as 

 the manor, 14 messuag^^s, 380 acres of 

 land, meadow and pasture, 50 acres of 

 wood, 160 acres of furze, heath, marsh and 



water, 41. rent, a fishery and a ferry ; 

 Feet of F. 392, m. 9 ; Plea R. 620, 

 no. 10. 



''^ Whitaker, op. cit. ii, 370. 



^2 Information of Mr. Dugdale. 



^^ The rest of the roofs are covered 

 with modern blue slates. 



