A recent broadcast of the BBC series Escape to the Country featured a farmhouse which I immediately recognised as Hales Hall, rebuilt in the early 1800s. It prompted me to explore more of its history since then. Its current occupier responded to a facebook post, asking me for more information. Unfortunately the deeds had been lost by a previous mortgage lender, but there was a stone plaque built into the wall.
The 1835 poll book provided information about the freehold occupants then.
It wasn’t difficult to build a list of occupants from censuses.
- 1841 James Miller age 33 and Margaret Miller age 70
- 1851 Richard Mackurell age 43 b. Out Rawcliffe
- 1861 James Williamson age 60 b. Preesall
- 1871 Richard Shorrock age 67 b. Sorby
- 1881 Thomas Williamson age 41 b. Out Rawcliffe
- 1891 Robert Williamson age 50 b. Out Rawcliffe and wife Jane
- 1901 Jane Williamson widow age 58 b. Pilling
- 1911 Thomas Butler age 47 b. Preesall
A respondent provided a photo of the Butler family still farming there in 1920. They are a line dating back to Preesall around 1620, apparently unrelated to the Butlers who previously lived at Hales Hall. Thomas won a prize for his Lancashire cheese.
The question of how Hales Hall was rebuilt was helped by the discovery of the Miller family grave at Stalmine.
Richard Miller was a yeoman living at Hales Hall until his death in 1785. He had a son Thomas (1770-1827) who rebuilt it in 1803. Thomas married Margaret Poole and had a daughter Ann (1800-1833) who married Alexander Liddell in 1831. Alexander remarried Agnes Pemberton in 1842 after Ann’s death. Thomas also had two sons Richard (1803-1836) and James (1807-1870) who lived at Hales Hall. James inherited from his brother Richard, but by 1851 had moved out to live elsewhere in Out Rawcliffe. My cousin Hannah Bowman was one of his servants in 1851. These surnames Miller, Poole and Liddell seemed vaguely familiar, but I was shocked to find out why when I looked at the ancestry of my cousin Thomas Butler Silcock’s wife Gertrude Mary Poole. His brother William Arnold Silcock also married Gertrude’s sister Edith Ann Poole.
There are two separate lines of unrelated Millers here, but Margaret Poole whose husband rebuilt Hales Hall had a sister Mary who was Gertrude’s great grandmother! What’s more, Gertrude’s mother Mary Jane Liddell was the daughter of Alexander Liddell by his second wife. Gertrude’s grandfather John Poole lived at Hail Nook, previously owned by his father in law Adam Miller. When John Poole died there in 1858 James Miller who had lived at nearby Hales Hall was an executor to his will. If we take back the line of the James Poole who married Ann Fox, his grandfather was James Poole of Hambleton who married Margaret Singleton of Carleton in 1701. When the estates of the Rawcliffe Butlers were sold off in 1723 they were initially bought by a consortium of 4 people, Rev Richard Cromleholme, John Leyland, Cornelius Fox and James Poole. Was the latter the same person who was the 4th great grandfather of Gertrude Mary Poole? What goes around comes around!
Chronicles 