Garrett Hall

Garrett Hall, or the Garrett, is a former manor house and now a Grade II listed farmhouse in TyldesleyFormer industrial town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, in Greater Manchester., Greater Manchester, England. It was the home and estate of the lords of the manor of Tyldesley after the manor was split from Astley. John Tyldesley lived there in 1468 and his son, John was living there in 1505 when he swore fealty to the Butlers at Bewsey for his land at Garratt.^[1] When John Tyldesley of Garrett died in 1558 his estate comprised seven messuages, 100 acres (40 ha) of heath and the same of moss, 20 acres (8 ha) of pasture, 10 of meadow, 6 of woodland and 40 acres (16 ha) of other land.^[2]

In 1613 the will of Lambert Tyldesley revealed that the former manor house contained “a kitchen, backhouse, dayhouse, mealhouse, larder, buttery, parlour and hall. In addition there was a storehouse, closet, three chambers over the kitchen, parlour and hall, a small chamber, a servant’s chamber and a maid’s room.”^[3] The Tyldesley family held the manor until Lambert Tyldesley’s death in 1652 when it passed through his great-granddaughter Mary, to her husband Thomas Stanley. In 1702 Thomas Withington was the tenant and it had a hall, parlour, little parlour, kitchen, buttery and chamber above. There were two looms in the kitchen and Withington kept five horses and a colt, cattle, sheep and two pigs.^[4] In 1716 the hall, its water mill for grinding corn, and kiln were let to tenants.^[1]

The estate remained with the Stanleys until it was sold to Thomas Clowes of Manchester in 1732. The Reverend Thomas Clowes sold the hall and estate to Robert Haldane Bradshaw of Worsley Old Hall for £21,000 in 1829 and it became part of the Bridgewater EstatesCoal mining company on the Lancashire Coalfield with headquarters in Walkden near Manchester.^[1] who were buying neighbouring estates for their mineral rights.^[5] The present landowners, Peel Holdings, have proposed building 600 houses on farmland between the cemetery and Mosley Common.^[6]

Architecture

The 17th-century hall is now a farmhouse. The two-storey, timber-framed structure was built on a T-shaped plan. It was altered in the 18th and 19th centuries when it was largely rebuilt in brick. It has a slate roof and its walls were rendered in the 20th century. The hall was designated a Grade II listed building in 1987.^[7]  The hall is reputed to have two priest holesSecret hiding places in the homes of prominent Catholics to hide priests from persecution..^[6]