A house lost, a landscape reborn: The story of Worsley New Hall
The property now known as RHS Bridgewater conceals a fascinating history.
The sudden decline in fortunes for Worsley New Hall are sadly familiar. Handed over for use during the First World War, subsequent post-war death duties crippled the family finances so much they had no choice but to abandon the vast property. But unlike so many others before it, while the house has been lost, the gardens have gone on to enjoy something of a 21st century renaissance.
Worsley New Hall was commissioned by Lord Francis Egerton to replace the family’s aging 18th century Brick Hall, which in turn had been built to replace the picturesque, ancient, timber-framed Old Worsley Hall as the Egerton family seat. While the Old Hall was left untouched to convene with nature, as work progressed, the Brick Hall was demolished.
The ancient and timber-framed Worsley Old Hall was the original Egerton family seat. Pictured here in 1901, the property was still occupied and in an extensive relationship with a vigorous creeper.
Egerton, an artist and politician, had inherited his family’s fortune in 1837, which had been accumulated over the years from vast investment in the complementary early industrial-era powerhouses that were coal mining and canal building.
His ancestor, also Francis, the 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, had responded to a fuel crisis — a crisis caused by a lack of wood to fire the ever-hungry furnaces, and the inability to swiftly move coal along primitive road networks — in the 18th century by creating fast, reliable watery transport links, many underground, from his coal fields straight into the industrial heart of Manchester. Within half a century, the Bridgewater Canal connected with Liverpool, and then Leeds, leaving Worsley smack bang in the centre of a highly-profitable transportation super highway.
Soon after moving to Worsley, Egerton commissioned architect Edward Blore, the man famed for finishing John Nash’s Buckingham Palace, to construct New Hall in sight of the canal. The building was to be in the fashionable style of Gothic, with a nod to the crumbling Old Hall in the form of ‘tasteful’ wood panelling. The first sod was cut on December 30,1839. By 1846, the sprawling, turreted stone mansion was complete at a cost of just under £100,000 (more than £9 million in today’s money). The same year Lord Francis Egerton became the First Earl of Ellesmere.
The hall and gardens photographed from the west. You can clearly see Edward Blore's Gothic style.
Worsley New Hall was a popular destination for those wishing to explore the industrial and industrious north. Queen Victoria wasted no time in paying a visit to Worsley. A clinker-built rowing boat was swiftly transformed into a ‘Royal Barge’ for Victoria and Albert’s 1951 visit, and ferried the royal couple from the nearby Paticroft Station to New Hall, an experience the queen was to describe as “fairylike”. On the first occasion, the royal couple stayed for two nights while they toured the area. Victoria and Albert must have been amused by their accommodation, paying a second visit, accompanied by the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), the Princess Royal and her betrothed, the Prince of Prussia, in 1857. The royal party stayed four nights this time.
Over the coming years, the Prince and Princess of Wales would stay in 1869, and return for a brief luncheon visit in 1909 as Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. This time, the royal party would be conveyed by motor car rather than Royal Barge, a sign that the canals had fallen from favour, an omen for the early Victorian Worsley Hall.
The gardens were immaculate. Seen here is the beautifully manicured tennis and croquet lawn.
Two weeks after Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, the third Earl of Ellesmere, also Francis, died. Two weeks after his untimely death, war was declared, and New Hall’s fate was sealed. The family swiftly handed the property over to the War Department. Within three weeks of the British Red Cross taking temporary possession, Worsley New Hall had been transformed into a fully-functioning 150-bed hospital looking after injured British and Belgian servicemen. One of the rooms had even been transformed into a fully-equipped operating theatre. Local businesses provided beds, bedding and towels, and the 4th Lord Ellesmere, along with the particularly generous donation of his family seat, also supplied each wounded man with postcards of the hall so they may write to loved ones showing where they were convalescing.
When the property was finally handed back in 1919, the family were hit with crippling death duties incurred on the passing of the third Earl. Their only option was to sell. Unlike many other comparable country estates, Worsley did sell in 1923 to a co-op of local businessmen. They in turn endeavoured to sell on the now-dated property, but to no avail. In 1939, it was handed back for war use again. Over the following years, it played host to, among others, the Home Guard, a temporary home for Dunkirk evacuees and American forces awaiting deployment to the D-Day landings.
A fountain on the upper terrace.
Fire damaged the top floor in 1943. Subsequent inspections found it to be suffering from extensive dry rot and considerable subsidence caused, somewhat ironically, by coal mining. The hall was finally sold for £2,500 (£97,000) to a local scrap merchant. Stripped for what remaining usable parts it had, it was then demolished in 1949, just two years shy of the centenary of the first visit by Queen Victoria.
The medieval Old Hall, however, remained. Having seen off not one, but two successors, the hall now enjoys a new life as a popular public house.
And the grounds of New Hall? From the 1950s, they were again requisitioned by the War Department, and then local government, for a variety of purposes including a radar station, food store and local shooting range. But destruction was, thankfully, not to be the end of New Hall’s gardens’ story.
In the 21st Century, after investment totalling close to £30 million, the regenerated, reinvigorated site opened as RHS Bridgewater on May 18, 2021. It now enjoys a far more bucolic, less explosive, life as the society’s fifth public display garden in the UK. Since its opening, it has opened its doors to over 2.85 million visitors. And while arriving by ‘Royal Barge’ is not mentioned on the gardens’ website, visitors can enjoy a reduced entry fee if they arrive ‘car-free’ at RHS Bridgewater via the RHS Greenway traffic-free cycling and walking route running alongside Lord Egerton’s Bridgewater Canal.
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