This Tudor manor house once stood on the banks of the River Irwell in Pendlebury, Manchester. It now is a museum on the banks of the James River in Richmond Virginia, bought by an American businessman in 1925, dismantled and transported across the Atlantic. There is also an archive of family documents known as the Agecroft Collection. For years I’ve puzzled how and why so many documents in the collection related to my Hull ancestors from around Poulton le Fylde.
In 1811 John Dauntesey bequeathed the manor to his cousins in a Chorley branch of the Hulls. John Hull died in 1813, leaving it to Rev Richard Buck, who had married John Hull’s sister Margaret Hull (1770-1830). Rev Buck’s mother was Alice Hull (1726-1793). After this came a confusing succession of different owners, some changing their name to Brown or even Dauntesey. What they all had in common was that they were descendants of my ancestors Richard Hull (1668-1703) and Margery Rossall, right down to the last English connection, my 6th cousin once removed Vivien Isobel Harkness Dauntesey (1915-1996) whose mother was Evelyn Hull. Vivien and her husband both adopted the surname Dauntesey. I descend from Nicholas Hull (1703-1746) in the diagram below.
Some of the documents in the Agecroft Collection are in the Chetham library, some were removed from there in 1955 by the Dauntesey family, some are in private collections and some are with the Agecroft Association in Richmond. There is a complete index compiled by J P Earwaker of the Chetham Society in 1885 which I found useful in researching my own early Hull history.
Chronicles 