Sharston Hall

Sharston Hall was a manor house built in Sharston, an area of Wythenshawe, Manchester, England, in 1701.^[1] A three-storey building with Victorian additions,^[2]it was purchased by Thomas Worthington, an early umbrella tycoon, and occupied by the Worthington family until 1856, when the last male heir died.^[1] The hall was occupied by the Henriques family in the 1920s, but following their death in a motor accident in 1932 the house was converted into flats.^[3][a]David Q. Henriques was a Manchester stockbroker and magistrate. He apparently lost control of the car he was driving in Hazel Grove and was involved in a head-on collision with a tram travelling in the opposite direction. Both Henriques and his wife died on their way to Stockport Infirmary.^[4] Manchester Corporation purchased the hall in 1926.^[5] During the Second World War it was leased by the local watch committee for use by the police, civil defence and fire services.^[6]

From 1941 until 1957 Sharston Hall’s coach house served as Wythenshawe’s fire station.^[7] In 1948 the Sharston Community Association, founded that same year, was allocated part of the hall for use as a community centre. Two years later the association took over the entire house, expanding in 1957 to also occupy the coach house then recently vacated by the fire service.^[8]

By the late 1960s the hall was in a poor state of repair and was boarded up.^[6] Sharston Hall was demolished in 1986, replaced by offices in a sympathetic 18th-century style^[2] – or what Pevsner’s architectural guide calls a parody of it^[9] – and houses.^[2]