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Eccles & District History Society
www.https://edhs.chessck.co.uk
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The 'Brick Hall', Worsley, 1833.
Work started on the Bridgewater Canal in 1759, and soon after this date the Duke decided a new hall should be built. This was an elegant, brick building in the classical style, which lay just to the south of the Old Hall, facing south, overlooking the canal.
The first occupant was John Gilbert, the Duke’s agent in Worsley. Indeed the Duke described it as “my stewards house”, though the Duke kept a suite of rooms there for his own use when he visited Worsley. On Gilbert's death in 1795 his son took over the administration of the Worsley estates and like his father lived at the Brick Hall.
On the Duke’s death in 1803 his will created the Bridgewater Trust to run the canal, mines and Worsley estate, under the control of a Superintendent Trustee, Robert Haldane Bradshaw. Bradshaw resided at the Brick Hall and continued to run Worsley until Lord Francis Egerton inherited Worsley in 1833 when Bradshaw was forced to resign.
Under the Duke’s will Bradshaw had the power to name his successor as Superintendent and he was pressurised to choose one of his staff, James Southern. Captain James Bradshaw, who had been his father's assistant and who rightly assumed that he would succeed his father, was so distraught at being passed over that he committed suicide in the Brick Hall, by cutting his own throat. Being a suicide he was not allowed to lie in consecrated ground so was buried outside the boundary of Ellenbrook Chapel. His father then bought the land and the 4th Earl of Ellesmere later had the chapel extended, covering the body. A plaque can still be seen in the chapel commemorating Captain Bradshaw.
This extension narrowed the road between the chapel and the Red Lion pub, as a consequence the housing development of the 1980s forced the construction of a new road in 1989. Thus a suicide at the Brick Hall in the 1830s had repercussions 150 years later.
With the building of the New Hall the Brick Hall became redundant and Lord Francis Egerton used the tragedy of the suicide as an excuse to demolish the hall in 1846.
This website was last updated in March 2024.
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