WEST DERBY HUNDRED 



ORMSKIRK 



his sister Elizabeth, who married Thomas Walmesley, 

 of Showley.' 



The site of Mossock Hall, just on the Aughton 

 boundary, is low, and has at one time been 

 moated. The hall, which is now and has been 

 for many years a farmhouse, belongs to a type con- 

 sisting of a main building with two rooms, one on 

 each side of a large central chimney stack, which are 

 entered from a common lobby and projecting porch 

 and give access to wings at either end, projecting either 

 to front or back, or in both directions. In this ex- 

 ample a porch of two stories opens into the lobby, with 

 a door to the kitchen on the left. The right-hand 

 partition and door of the lobby have been removed, 

 and a passage as wide as the lobby is cut off from the 

 sitting-room on the right of the central stack, to give 

 access to the right wing of the house, 

 which contains on the ground floor 

 a dairy, staircase, and second sitting- 

 room. 



The oldest parts of the building are 

 of the first half of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, two stories in height, of red brick 

 with stone dressings, the masonry being 

 of good quality, and include the porch, 

 which has outer and inner doorways 

 with four-centred heads, the lobby and 

 central chimney stack, the front walls of 

 kitchen and sitting-room to right and 

 left of the porch, and probably part of 

 the back walls of both. The front 

 window of the kitchen is of five lights, 

 square-headed, and that of the sitting- 

 room, now cut off from it by a parti- 

 tion, of six lights ; both have plain 

 chamfered stone mullions and dressings. 

 Heavy beams run across the fireplace 

 recesses in both rooms, and carry the 

 timbers of the upper floor, so that none 

 of the constructional woodwork rests on 

 the masonry of the central chimney — a 

 wise precaution, the neglect of which has caused 

 the loss of many an old house of this date and 

 earlier. The beam in the sitting-room is the 

 roughly squared trunk of an oak tree, fourteen inches 

 square at its smaller end, and eighteen or more at 

 the butt. 



The back wall of the house has been refaced or 

 rebuilt in the eighteenth century in very poor red 



brick with wooden casements, a great contrast to the 

 excellent work of the front. 



The sitting-room in the right wing and bedroom 

 above are of better construction, stone-faced, with 

 a massive stone chimney stack, and doubtless date 

 from the prosperous farming days of the beginning 

 of the nineteenth century. 



The side wall of the kitchen is a very rough affair, 

 and there has evidently been at this end of the build- 

 ing a wing in some measure corresponding to that 

 still standing. 



On the back elevation some nine feet of rough 

 stone footings are to be seen projecting from below 

 the eighteenth-century brickwork, at a slightly dif- 

 ferent angle to the present wall. They stop on the 

 line of junction of the right wing with the main 



Mossock Hall 



building, and it may be that this wing formerly 

 projected beyond the back wall.^ 



There was a resident priest at Mossock Hall at the 

 beginning of the eighteenth century.' 



STOTFOLDSHJW,* as stated, was granted to the 

 Hospitallers by Ralph de Bickerstath. A little later 

 (about 1 1 80) it was granted by Ralph de Diva, their 

 prior, to Norton Priory in Cheshire.* It was held 



^ Burke, Commoners (1837), iii, 228 ; 

 Abram, Blackburn, 459. The estate was 

 registered by Richard Walmesley of Rib- 

 chester at Preston about 1716 ; Piccope 

 MSS. iii, 1 66 (from R.i, n. 145). Thomas 

 Walmesley of Showley, party to a deed in 

 1756, is described as grandson of Richard 

 Walmesley of Ormskirk, which Richard was 

 nephew and heir-at-law to Richard Mos- 

 sock of BickerstafFe ; ibid. 372 (from R. 

 30 of Geo. II). 



2 *The attic rooms have clay floors and 

 the walls exhibit the mud and wattle 

 construction so often to be met with in 

 old houses. Forty years ago the place 

 was In a very neglected state, and was 

 surrounded with timber and old hedges. 



' It was generally believed by the neigh- 

 bours to be haunted, and was known for 

 some time as Boggart Hall, the only 

 inhabitant there being a farm labourer. 

 The stories told are that one of the 

 ghosts, with clanking chains, used to 

 walk on stormy nights along a dark and 



narrow road leading from opposite the 

 old barn. The house itself had a ghost 

 of its own, that of a lady in a green dress, 

 who followed any visitor leaving in the 

 night season ; would bang the door and 

 disappear. It would seem that these 

 ghosts had been laid to rest after a sum 

 of money had been found, which, gossip 

 says, was concealed either on the staircase 

 in the balustrades, which are hollow and 

 of great thickness, or in a coffin-shaped re- 

 ceptacle on the landing, which evidently 

 had been a secret place for hiding valuables 

 or plate in troublous times. 



' One of the remarkable objects on the 

 farm is a huge stone trough near the 

 stables, which at one time lay in a field 

 near the house. Report has it, that if 

 removed from that spot it was always 

 mysteriously replaced during the night. 

 In 1875 an old sleeve-link was found 

 near the roots of a large thorn opposite 

 the principal door of the house. It is 

 said to have belonged to Lord Charle- 



281 



mont, whose name it bore, and must 

 have remained buried for more than two 

 centuries ' ; G. C. Newstead, Annals of 

 Aughton, i8~20. A view of the house is 

 given. 3 N. Blundell's Diary^ z. 



■* This is the earliest form of the name 

 (as * Stotfoldechage '), 121 2. The first 

 / and the / vary to c and r, as Scotford- 

 shaw. The name has long been lost. 



fi Kuerden MSS. ii, 269^, n. 80. A 

 curious undated grant is contained in 

 the same volume (fol. 268, B. 16), by 

 which William the priest of Stotfoldshaw 

 conveyed to God and St, Mary of Norton, 

 with his body, the whole of *Stodfold- 

 shohom * and * Menshahom.' At the 

 dissolution it was found that a rent ot 

 4j. was paid to Norton from Stotfold- 

 shaw ; Ormerod, Cbes. (ed. Helsby), i, 

 686. A grant to Richard de la More by 

 the Hospitallers is recited in a charter in 

 Birch Chapel (Chet. Soc), 189. In it 

 * Adam Son of Ralph' is named as the 

 donor to them. 



36 



