Monument record MDR196 - Shallcross Hall, Whaley Bridge

SK 0129 7971: Shallcross Hall: Early Georgian 2½ storeyed building in stone with two later symmetrical projecting pavilions, two bays deep. A few windows remain of the Elizabethan Hall which preceded the present building. (1) The site of the medieval Shallcross Hall was described as being occupied (in 1905) by an 18th century barn, 'the uninteresting wing of the farm buildings'. The hall would have been of the half-timbered type. On the site was 'a raised bank for the foundations of the hall itself, allowing for the main approach from the old road to lead through a mound, which perhaps represents the gatehouse, straight to the door of the inner hall, passing on the right the chapel which probably stood where the Elizabethan stables now are, for there is just sufficient in the stones of their foundation to raise a suspicion of such a building. Below the site are remains of what was once no doubt a small fish pond and the fences still indicate the probable line of the curtilage wall'. Towards the end of the 16th century a new hall was built on the rising ground to the right of the old hall. This has mostly disappeared 'save that the position of the walls are still indicated, as if upon a rough ground plan, by trenches in the soil showing where the old stones had been dug up'. The site is at right angles to that of its medieval predecessor. The stable and farm buildings of the second hall were built on the lower ground on the opposite side of the road, which would then have been vacated by the disuse of the chapel after the Reformation. These still exist, though much modified. At the beginning of the 18th century a third hall was erected, standing 'but a little to the east' of the earlier halls. In 1905 it was being used as a summer residence by the owner of Shallcross Manor, Col. E Cotton-Jodrell. Panelling in the dining-room, a doorway and two windows appear to have been re-used from the Elizabethan house. Shallcross Hall was an austere Georgian house of 2½ storeys and 7 bays which stood on a bare ridge on the east side of the Goyt valley. It was demolished to make way for a housing development in the late 1960s. It has been suggested that the previous house had been timber-framed, but the surviving fragments of an older house once visible in the fabric belied this. The Shalcross family had held land there from the very early 14th century and the last Hall was built c. 1723-5 by John, the last male heir. (4)