Cuerden Hall

Cuerden Hall from the northwest

Cuerden Hall is a country house in the village of Cuerden, near Preston, in the English county of Lancashire . English Heritage has it as a historical building II *. Grade listed. The house was privately owned from 1717 to 1906 and was then used by the British Army until the 1960s . Today it is a Sue Ryder Care Home . The park and the rest of the estate are called Cuerden Valley Park .

history

The first house on the property, which dates back to the 17th century, no longer exists. The Charnock family from Charnock Richard owned the property until 1521. Then Richard Charnock of Cuerden and Leyland sold the manor to Thomas Langton , Lord Newton . In 1605 Henry Banastre of Bank Hall bought the property from the Langton family (Barons of Newton-in-Makerfield). Henry Banastre's daughter Alice , the wife of Sir Thomas Haggerston , owned the property in 1641.

The present house dates back to 1717 and was commissioned by Banastre Parker , son of Robert Parker and former High Sheriff of Lancashire in 1710, before he and his family moved from Extwistle Hall . After his death in 1738, the property fell to his son Robert Parker (1727–1779) and then to his grandsons Banastre Parker (1758–1788) and Thomas Towneley-Parker (1760–1794).

The parapet above the entrance door - a coat of arms, flanked by a deer and a falcon on a carved stone slab. The coat of arms is that of the Parkers, combined with that of the Towneleys and that of the Brookes. (1816 married Robert Towneley-Parker (1793–1879) Harriet Brooke (1798–1878), the daughter of Thomas Brooke from Church Minshall in Cheshire ).

In the years 1816 to 1819, Robert Towneley-Parker (1793–1879), who had inherited the property from his father, had the country house rebuilt according to plans by Lewis Wyatt . This included a major expansion of the east wing.

After the death of Captain Robert Towneley-Parker (1823-1894) and later that of his brother Thomas Towneley-Parker (1822-1906), the property fell to her nephew Reginald Arthur Tatton (1857-1926), who had the gardens redesigned. He had a pergola and a Salettl , as well as an enclosed garden and a pond built there.

During the First World War , Tatton had the country house converted into an army hospital, which was operated from May 1, 1915 to June 8, 1917 as the Cuerden Hall Auxiliary Hospital . The salons with the collection of old masters and portraits of the Tatton family that still adorn the walls were converted into sickrooms and furnished with beds, bedding and other facilities, while the park and gardens were used as a recreation area for the soldiers who lived there z. B. could go boating on the pond, make hay or have a picnic. There were also trips to the Tattons' other nearby home, Astley Hall . An album of photographs, letters and newspaper clippings illustrating this particular story of Cuerden Hall has recently been available for purchase.

During the Second World War , the property was requisitioned by the Ministry of Defense and converted into an army training center. Later it became the division headquarters No. 4 (of a total of five) of the air defense . Until the end of the 1950s, the country house was temporarily occupied by the British Army and in 1958 the Tatton family finally sold it to the Ministry of Defense after almost 250 years of private use. It then became the Army Headquarters for the Northwest District.

In 1977 the Central Lancashire Development Corporation took over Cuerden Hall from the Department of Defense and established its own headquarters there. New offices and parking lots were built on the site. In 1978 the park and the rest of the property was converted to Cuerden Valley Park and in 1986, after the corporation vacated the house, it was converted into a Sue Ryder nursing home .

Gallery image

South wing and garden facade; on the left side are the stables (mostly outside the picture), which form the western third of the building, the middle third (on the left side) is the original country house from the 18th century with a simple, rectangular floor plan with two courtyards, and the east wing (on the right) is the main extension according to plans by Lewis Wyatt, which was built in 1816–1819.