Rufford Old Hall

Rufford Old Hall in Lancashire keeps one room of the house Thomas Hesketh probably built before he died in 1523: a timber great hall with five bays of hammer-beam roof, each beam ending in a carved angel, and a free-standing screen of bog oak that is the only known survivor of its kind from the first half of the sixteenth century. The Heskeths were recusant Catholics, there is a hidden chamber behind the canopy over the high table, and a will of 1581 commends a "William Shakeshafte" to Sir Thomas Hesketh — the whole documentary basis for the tradition that Shakespeare came here at seventeen. The ghosts are on record too, and they have names: a Grey Lady said to be Elizabeth Hesketh, a man in Elizabethan dress by the great fireplace, and Queen Elizabeth I in the dining room, all three set down in a BBC page of 2005. In 1907 the rector of Rufford went looking for the parish's ghost, found nobody who had seen it, and blamed the rats.

The Heskeths were lords of the manor of Rufford long before there was a hall worth arguing about. The Victoria County History traces the descent from William de Hesketh, who came into the land through his marriage to Maud Fitton, through Sir John de Hesketh, who held the consolidated manor from 1318, and Sir William, who obtained a market charter in 1339 and fought at Crecy. The house itself, the county historians concluded, "was probably erected by Thomas Hesketh, who died in 1523" — a man whose will, now British Library Additional MS 32104, provided for chantries at Harwood, Rufford, Croston and Longton, for almshouses and a school at Rufford, for a bridge over the Douglas and for the paving of roads. He was building for the next world as busily as for this one. What survives of that house is one room. The great hall measures 46 ft 6 in by 22 ft 6 in, its timber walls standing on a low stone base and rising 18 ft to the wall-plate. Five bays of hammer-beam roof end, at both ends of every beam, in a carved wooden angel holding a shield. At the east end the screens passage is divided from the hall by "speres" standing 4 ft out from the walls, and in the 14 ft between them stands a free-standing carved screen of bog oak, 7 ft wide — the only known surviving example from the first half of the sixteenth century. The bog oak came out of the parish itself: the Rev. W. G. Procter, rector of Rufford, opened his 1907 history of the manor by explaining that the district between the Ribble and the Mersey is a drowned forest, and that trunks of oak, beech and fir "are now continually cropping up in large quantities on the reclaimed moss lands". Procter also recorded how the room was heated before the stone chimney was added: by a brazier set in the middle of the floor, with the smoke leaving through a louvre in the roof, "which occupied the position of the present lantern". The Heskeths stayed Catholic after the Reformation, and it cost them. Sir Thomas Hesketh, knighted in 1553 and dead in June 1588, "adhered to the Roman Catholic religion for some time after the accession of Elizabeth"; his wife and eldest son "seldom or never resorted to church"; a Thomas Hesketh was returned as a recusant in 1594, and the wife of Thomas Hesketh was among those presented at Rufford in 1628. It is against that background that the county historians noted, in 1911, that the carved canopy over the high table is carried up to the roof and forms a "secret chamber" behind it in the gable, "to which there are now no visible means of approach". Later accounts speak of that chamber being discovered in the twentieth century; it was already described in print in 1911. The same recusant household supplies the hall's most famous story. On 3 August 1581 Alexander Hoghton of Lea, a Catholic landowner some miles away, made a will leaving his musical instruments and "play clothes" to his brother, or failing him to Sir Thomas Hesketh, and adding: "And I most heartly require the said Sir Thomas to be friendly unto Fluke Gyllome and William Shakeshafte now dwelling with me and either to take them into his service or else to help them to some good master as my trust is he will." That is the whole documentary basis for the tradition that the seventeen-year-old William Shakespeare spent time at Rufford. E. A. J. Honigmann argued the identification at length in 1985; against it stands the plain fact that Shakeshafte was a common Lancashire surname. The National Trust's 2007 souvenir guide states that he "almost certainly" was the playwright, without saying why. The family left. Sir Thomas Dalrymple Hesketh abandoned the Old Hall as a residence in about 1798 and built the plain classical New Hall nearby; the old house was let to a tenant farmer and the banqueting hall used as the village school until it was repaired and refitted in 1821 for his eldest son, who lived there until he succeeded to the estates in 1842. The east range had already been rebuilt by Sir Thomas Hesketh in 1662 — the statutory list records a plaque on that wing carved with the Hesketh double-headed eagle and the date 1662 beneath it — and the 1821 work is dated on the rainwater heads. The glazed lantern on the ridge belongs to that restoration, not to the Tudor house. After 1867, when the Heskeths inherited Easton Neston in Northamptonshire, Rufford was a tenanted house: George Holme was living in it when the British Association met at Southport, and Robert Rankin occupied it in 1911. Thomas Fermor-Hesketh, first Baron Hesketh, gave the hall and its contents to the National Trust in 1936. It was listed Grade I on 11 October 1968. Twice, in 1948 and 1958, death-watch beetle attacked the great hall's timbers so badly that the whole roof had to be dismantled and the timbers steeped before they could be put back.

Rufford Old Hall is at 200 Liverpool Road, Rufford, near Ormskirk, Lancashire L40 1SG, on the A59 about seven miles north of Ormskirk. It belongs to the National Trust and is open to the public; entry is free to members. On the day this entry was checked against the Trust's own visitor page (18 July 2026), the house opened 11:00-16:30 with last entry at 16:00, and the garden and tea-room from 10:30 to 16:30. Admission covers the house, garden, woodland, tea-room and the second-hand bookshop in the Coach House. The Trust advertised two price bands. From 13 February to 20 December: adult £14.30 with Gift Aid or £13.00 without, child (5-17) £7.20 or £6.50, under-fives free, family (two adults and up to three children) £35.80 or £32.50. From 1 January to 12 February, when less of the property is open, the adult price drops to £7.20 or £6.50. Group rates apply from fifteen people, by arrangement with the property. Prices change; check before travelling. Access is genuinely restricted by the building. Self-propelled wheelchairs can reach the ground floor and the great hall; electric wheelchairs and mobility scooters can reach the great hall only; there is a flight of stairs to the first floor and no lift. Designated mobility parking is close to the entrance and there is an adapted toilet in the cobbled courtyard. Only assistance dogs are allowed in the house and the Orchard Paddock; dogs on leads are welcome in the North Woods, the North Paddock, the garden and the cobbled courtyard. Morning guided tours run on open days when staff and volunteers are available, and there is no need to book a ghost tour, because the Trust does not run one. The Rufford branch of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, completed in 1781, passes immediately behind the property, and the towpath makes the pleasantest approach on foot. If you go for the ghosts, go for the screen instead: it is the only one of its kind left, and it is free to look at once you are through the door.