Little Moreton Hall - Congleton, Cheshire (NT)
The earliest parts of Little Moreton Hall, the Great Hall and the east wing, date from around 1450 and were enlarged around 1480 by the addition of the west wing, the porch and gallery. The estate itself is much older, thought to have originally been an Anglo-Saxon farm, which prospered in Edward the Confessor's time (crowned 1042) but suffering under William I's repressive and punitive actions; by Domesday (1086) it was valued at a paltry two shillings. By the time the land was inherited by Sir Richard de Moreton, the family was prosperous and built their new home according to the local fashion - a wood framed building, infilled with wattle and daub and resting on stone footings. The large proportion of wood to infill bears testament to both the availability of good oak in Cheshire at the time and also the Moreton family's wealth. Although the majority of such houses today appear in stark black and white, originally they left the oak to weather into a soft silver-grey and the plaster infill was painted a pale ochre. Here and there around the Hall, the newer replaced timbers have been left and give a good idea of the more subtle original colouring.
The Great Hall today shows the development of the family fortunes, both in growth and decline; the original had no glass windows, no fireplace and a medieval screens passage with minstrel's gallery overhead. The floor would have been of beaten earth, strewn with straw and herbs Alterations in the late fifteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries are apparent in the fireplace, the stone flagged floor, the beautiful and costly windows, with their tiny panes set in patterns, the insertion of an upper floor, later removed again and the great glazed bay window, echoed in the adjacent bay in the Withdrawing Room. The inscriptions above the two windows 'God is Al in Al Thing: This windous Whire made by William Moreton in the yeare of oure Lourde M.D.LIX.' and 'Richard Dale Carpeder made thies windous by the grac of God' firmly date them to 1559 and their commissioner and craftsman are recorded for posterity. The south wing was built in the early 1560s, with the gallery probably a late addition to the scheme, around 1570-80. The Domestic block on the south west corner completed the building more or less as we see it today. The fact that it is very substantially as it was in the seventeenth century gives a clue as to how the family fortunes were going.
The Moretons emerge from the extant documentation as a close, though sometimes fractious family, with cousins, aunts and uncles all at some time living with the main family. The Civil War was a turning point in their prosperity as being Royalists in a mainly Parliamentarian area, they suffered sequestration, imprisonment and billeting at the hands of the Army. The expensive pre-war years, with William Moreton III's five sons all in need of financial support at University and pursuing hit and miss careers at sea and in law, had left the estate unable to deal with the Parliamentarian demands and so even after the Restoration in 1660, money was tight.
For us visitors today, this means we see Little Moreton Hall with very few alterations dated after the seventeenth century. The house did suffer from a certain amount of neglect as it was let out to tenants and various parts used for storage (the Chapel was used as a coal cellar in the mid-nineteenth century), but the Moreton family even in absence did what they could to keep the house from decay. Repairs were made, most often to the troublesome south wing, whose ill-considered though wonderful Long Gallery caused trouble from its construction due to the extra weight on a building with no foundations. By 1892, the last Moreton owner of the house, an Anglican nun named Elizabeth, set the house back to something like it had once been and re-dedicating the Chapel. She left it to her cousin, Bishop Charles Thomas Abraham, on the condition that it was never sold, and in turn, he and his son left it to the National Trust.
Now that we may all enjoy the many delights of Little Moreton Hall, further restoration and repair continues and in 1976, while work was being undertaken in the Parlour, a remarkable series of wall paintings was discovered under the Georgian panelling. Dating from around 1580, the story of Susanna and the Elders from the Bible appears with explanatory text above painted mock panelling. Although now much fragmented, enough remains to give a vivid reminder of the colour and style of decoration aspired to by the Moretons. Other highlights are the remaining furniture; in the Great Hall, the long board and trestle table and bench and the cupboard full of boxes, which may have been used for spices are mentioned in various inventories taken over the centuries, as is the table now in the Withdrawing Room, octagonal based and round topped, it appears to have been built especially for use in one of the bay windows. The Long Gallery too is not to be missed. From the outside it teeters precariously on top of the house and from the inside it warps and disorientates, as does the fireplace and overmantle in the adjoining Upper Porch room, apparently at a bizarre angle but so the guides say, actually the only true vertical.
Outside, the house is completely surrounded by a moat, now complete with golden fish, coots and ducks. Inside the area encompassed by the moat is a garden planted with beds of flowers and herbs, as it was originally and also a restored knot garden and orchard.