I grew up in Ladybarn, next to Mauldeth Road, then we moved to Stockport and I was still living at the end of Mauldeth Road. I suppose like the River Mersey, it has always been a big feature of my life. Having said that, I was never really aware of Mauldeth Hall as a child, I knew about Heaton Lodge, because we lived on its site, and I had been to Chatsworth, so for a ten year old, that’s perhaps enough big houses. The obsession interest came a little later.
Mauldeth may be a corruption of Marled Earth. Marl is an clay substance containing lime, and greatly used as a fertiliser. The Daubholes in Manchester, which became the Infirmary Pond were orignially marl pits¹. I am not so sure if the residents of Mauldeth Road would like to be associated with fertisiler. The road is named after the Hall.
Mauldeth Hall lies near the border between Burnage and Heaton Mersey at Green End. It was built around 1832, and naturally does not appear on Johnson’s map of 1819, however, intriguingly there is a building on the site at that time, Lee Gate.
To this day, Leegate road borders the Hall, and if we look at the 1848 Ordnance survey there is a building to the right of the Hall in the grounds. There are references to a Lee Gate Mansion in contemporary documents, but we will have to leave that for now.
The Hall was built for Joseph Chessborough Dyer (1780-1871). Joseph was born in Connecticuit, New England. He was the son of Nathaniel Dyer of the Rhode Island Navy. He was particularly good at mechanics, and when young designed an unsinkable lifeboat in which he and his father travelled the New England Coast.
He succeeded to the business of a French refugee in 1796 and started coming to England in 1802, eventually settling in 1811 after marrying Ellen Jones in London. He started specialising in mechanics, introducing several US innovations into England, including a steel engraver and a carding engine in 1811. He came to Manchester in 1816, and was involved in the foundation of the Manchester Guardian in 1821. His wife died in 1842 and he sold his works to Curtis and Madeley of Heaton Norris and Manchester and occupied himself after that with science, literature and politics. He only lived at Mauldeth Hall with his wife and son, Wilson² (c1826-1867) for a short time, possibly despairing of the ruinous cost of the build, and moved out possibly as early as 1838. After Mauldeth, he lived near Cringle Villa in Burnage, a neighbour of Samuel Watts, Sir James‘, brother.
It is unclear who is living in the Hall in 1841, there is an entry for Lee Gate, a Jane Jones, and New York a Mary Smith and her family. Both appear to be living with servants. We do know that the Hall was originally called Lee Gate, and then renamed Heaton Hall, but that conflicted with the bigger Heaton Hall in Prestwich, it was finally named Mauldeth Hall by 1851. However, given Joseph Dyer, was the Hall briefly referred to as New York?
It was Edmund Wright who renamed it Mauldeth. Edmund was a cotton merchant, born in Burton, Nottinghamshire in 1781. He had established a Calico Printers in Bulwell on the river Leen, which lands were extensive and covered around 18 acres, with a further 14 acres attached to the works and house. By 1813 he was operating from 6 Marsden Square in Manchester and disposing of his property at Bulwell. He subsequently moved to 24 Cannon Street. In 1851, he is living at the Hall with his wife Mary and grandchildren Edmund Henry Hooper and Mary Blanche Hooper and a very extensive household staff of a butler, footman, groom, gardener, housekeeper, lady’s maid, head nurse, under nurse, cook and kitchen maid. Edmund’s daughter Mary was not present at the time of the census, and Mary’s husband, The Reverend Webster Frederic Henry Hooper, incumbent of St Paul in Withington, had died on July 4th 1849 at Mauldeth Hall.
Edmund died in 1852 and the hall was purchased by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners as the residence of the first Bishop of Manchester, James Prince Lee (1804-1869). James was born in London and studied at Trinity College, Cambridge earning a BA in 1828, a MA in 1831 and Doctor of Divinity in 1861. He married Susannah Penrice and in 1830 went to serve as assistant master at Rugby School under Thomas Arnold. In 1847 Queen Victoria apponted him as the first Bishop of Manchester and he was enthroned at the newly converted Cathedral on 11 February 1848.
James died at Mauldeth Hall in 1869, and was buried at St John in Heaton Mersey on New Years Eve that year. After that the Hall was vacant for a short time, the only entry on the 1871 census being Elizabeth Gell and family who were living at Mauldeth Hall House Farm (along with three servants). Meanwhile the Ecclesiastical Commissioners had put the Hall up for sale in April 1870. It was still for sale in July 1872 and did not reach the reserve of £14,500 (£1.5m in 2020) only achieving a bid of £12,000 from a Mr J Fildes in a sparsely populated auction room.
The reason for the sale of the Hall was because James Lee’s successor, James Fraser (1818-1885) thought the Hall far too an extravagant place for his residence, and doggedly refused to live there, even threatening resignation if the Commissioners insisted on it.
The Hall was purchased by William Romaine Callender (1825-1876) for the reserve price soon after the unsuccessful auction. William was the son of William Romaine Callender a Manchester merchant and calico printer. He was born to William And Hannah Pope on 2 June at 7 Nelson Street in Chorlton Row.
He joined the family firm of Callender & Sons in 1847, and they soon became one of Manchester’s leading cotton spinners. He was a paternalistic employer who believed in literacy and self help, and put his beliefs into place at Barrow Bridge Model village near Bolton as well as working with Robert Barnes.
His father was a priminent Whig, but he sat as Conservative MP for Manchester between 1874 and 1876. In 1875 he fell ill after attending an Orange Order demonstration, and was advised to travel to the south coast to aid his recovery, but sadly died at St Leonards on Sea in Sussex in January 1876. He was buried that month at St John in the family vault in Heaton Mersey. The funeral was attended by a sea of dignatories, despite the unpleasant weather, the Manchester Courier of 31 January reports:
….it could well not have been unpleasanter than it was…. one of the densest fogs which for a long time has enshrouded the city, shut out of vision objects a few yards distant from the eye, and the atmosphere was raw and cold even for a January morning.
William’s untimely death damaged his reputation for it was claimed that he had retained in his firm, large sums of money due to the heirs of his brother and father. This caused a lengthy legal dispute, only resolved in 1889, during which Barrow Bridge mills were closed and workers dispersed, thus earning it the epithet, Lancashire’s deserted village.
Again in 1881 there is nobody at the Hall, save for Arthur Smith, his wife Lily and newborn daughter Lily, as well as a hapless unemployed coachman, possibly from the Hall, one Arthur Gaskins. Arthur Smith was a market gardener.
This was because the Northern Counties Hospital for the Incurables had resolved to buy the estate at a meeting at Manchester Town Hall on 25 November 1880. They considered it to be a well built mansion in ample grounds situated in a healthy suburb of Manchester. They purchased the estate for £15,000 and considered that another £5,000 would prepare the estate to admit patients the following spring, appealing for funds for those who realise the sad condition of those pure sufferers, the incurables.
The patients eventually moved in to the home, from the old Ardwick premises, on 7 June 1882, and despite the rather unfortunate and depressing name for any patient admitted, of 63 patients in attendance, there had only been three deaths, and two patients had left the hospital.
The incurables who frequented the home, were of course those who had led respectable and honourable lives. The advent of the NHS meant that the Hall was transformed into a home for the physically handicapped, and it finally closed its doors in 1990.
After that the Hall entered a brief period of decline and neglect, during the last century, much of the grounds had been taken over by Heaton Moor golf club and the Hall was eventually purchased by Gerry Yeung, a philanthropist and the owner of the Yang Sing restaurant in Manchester. He served as High Sherrif of Greater Manchester in 2017. Gerry spent money refurbishing the Hall and it has served as the residence of the Chinese Consul.
Pevsner liked it, he called it an exceptionally fine ashlar faced late Grecian villa. A hidden gem in Heaton Mersey.
¹The Daub Holes were first flooded to make a pond, and eventually became the sunken Piccadilly Gardens.
² Wilson became a portrait painter, and describes that as his profession on the census.
Sources
The House and Farm Accounts of the Shuttleworths of Gawthorpe Hall, ed Harland: Chetham Society, 1858.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaton_Moor
The Buildings of England, South Lancashire , Niklaus Pevsner: Penguin 1969.
https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Joseph_Chessborough_Dyer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Prince_Lee
https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/William_Romaine_Callender
https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-39657
© Allan Russell 2020.
The History of Stockport in 100 Halls 