Ordsall Hall - Architecture

Architecture

There are two separate elements to the present-day house: the timber-framed south range built in the 15th century, and the brick west range constructed in 1639. The hall was originally built around a central quadrangle, but the other wings making up that space are no longer present. Drawing on the earliest description of the house, from 1380, the Salford City Council describes how it comprised "a hall, five chambers, a kitchen and a chapel. It was associated with two stables, three granges, two shippons, a garner, a dovecote, an orchard and a windmill, together with 80 acres of arable land and six acres of meadow."

The Star Chamber, which takes its name from the lead stars on its ceiling, leads off the Great Hall; it and the solar above—a private upper room that would have contained a bed—are the oldest remaining parts of the hall.

Substantial alterations appear to have take place during the early years of Samuel Egerton's ownership in the mid-18th century. The canopy at the dais end of the Great Hall was destroyed—although part of it can still be seen in the north wall—when a floor was inserted and new rooms were formed with lath and plaster partitions. The east wing of the hall was probably demolished at about the same time, but certainly before 1812, the date of the earliest estate map.

There are believed to have been underground passages leading from the Hall into Manchester. One of them, running under the River Irwell to the Hanging Bridge Hotel, at the northern end of Deansgate, was described in 1900, following the rediscovery of the Hanging Bridge after it had been buried for 200 years:

... I was shown a door in Hanging Bridge Hotel cellar where the arches could be seen and a door made up ... it was the entrance to an underground passage under the Irwell, possibly to Ordsall Hall ... the owner had not traversed the passage himself, but the previous owner had, but had to turn back because of bad smells .... —Letter to the Manchester Guardian, April 1900