If the weather’s bad or if you simple want to take it easy, there’s plenty to do in the house

There’s no shortage of books in the house and you’re welcome to read any you like – but please don’t take them with you when you go, most of them have been in the family for decades.

There’s a Nintento Wii in the drawing room with lots of games, including Mario Kart and Wii sports.

In the cupboard in the study there’s a selection of board games (including Monopoly, Scrabble and Trivial Pursuits) and jigsaws.

If you want things to do in the garden, there’s swingball and Kubb (instructions in the bag) in the garage.  There’s also a paddling pool if it gets hot!

History

The Families

The Taylors, Edwards-Taylors, Pilling-Taylors and Worsley-Tayors

The Bashall Estate, as well as a large house near Whalley called Morton Hall, passed to James Taylor, who had previously lived in Rising Bridge in Accrington, at the end of the 18th century.  From him, it passed to his son James and then to his son John, whose portrait, as well as his wife Anne’s can be seen on the stairs.  When John and Anne died without children, the estate passed through the female line several times – each time with the inheritor taking on the Taylor name.  First it past to his aunt Elizabeth Edwards, then to her sister Margaret Pilling, and then to his cousin James Worsley (whose portrait is also on the stairs), who became the first Worsley-Taylor.  James left the estate to his son Henry, whose portrait is the large one on the stairs.  Henry was a QC and the first baronet, and our great-great grandfather.  His wife Harriette is in the beautiful portrait at the top of the stairs.  Harriette as a young girl can be seen in a portrait in the drawing room, together with the rest of her family.  Both Henry and James Taylor did a lot of building on the estate, and if you walk around the estate (including over at Bashall Town), you will see many buildings with their initials, IT and HWWT on them.  Henry left to the estate to his son James, and James to his daughter Dorothea.  

When Dorothea died without children in 2013, James’s line ended and the estate passed down to us.  This was through Henry and Harriette’s daughter Mary, who married Robert Peel of Knowlmere, near Newton (the famous prime minister of the same name is of the same family). Knowlmere is a beautiful house which is still in the family, and it can be seen from some public footpaths (see the walks section).  Mary was the mother of Margaret, who was the mother of Anna, our mother – a very matrilineal inheritance!  We have all spent a lot of our lives on the Bashall and Knowlmere estates.

The main house on the Worsley-Tayor estate was Bashall Hall – on the road to Waddington, just opposite Bashall Barn.  The hall and the rest of Bashall Town, the tiny hamlet around Bashall Barn, was sold in the 1960s to cover death duties.  The family in fact did not live at the hall and had mostly lived in Moreton Hall, outside Whalley.  There are pictures of Moreton Hall in the canopy room, and the large landscape in the hall is a view taken from Moreton.  It was a so-called ‘Calendar House’, having 365 windows, 52 chimneys and 12 doors. Moreton was used as a hospital during the second world war and afterwards was no longer considered suitable for habitation and was pulled down.  You can still see the lodge house on the road from Whalley to Accrington.  The family then moved into Townhead, a house in Pendleton, because there wasn’t a house on the estate of a suitable size.  After the death of her mother, Dorothea redid the Old Forge and moved in here, making it the principle family home and bringing some of the furniture, portraits, ornaments and library that the family had accumulated over the years.

The Watkins

Harriette Worsley-Taylor was born Harriette Watkin and was the daughter of Edward Watkin, an important Victorian visionary known as ‘The Railway King’.  You can find a couple of biographies of Edward and his father Absolom – both important figures in the history of Manchester and Britain- in the book case by the front door. You can go on the Watkin trail in South Manchester to see key parts of their life, including Rose Hill, their house in Northenden where many prime ministers and important people such as Charles Dickens were entertained.  There is a collection of artifacts relating to Edward and Absolom Watkin in Chetham’s Library in Manchester.  Over the years, the family has donated many items to this collection – including several in 2016. Edward Watkin is our great-great-great grandfather.

The Portraits

There are many family portraits around the house, mostly in the drawing room and on the stairs.  In the drawing room are the Watkin family (see above): Edward and Mary (née Mellor), my great-great-great grandparents, on the far wall, their son Alfred in the corner and their daughter Harriette, my great-great grandmother, by the door.  There’s also a print in the dining room of Edward Watkin persuading investors to support his vision of the Midlands railway (there’s a copy of this picture in the National Railway Museum in York) and a Punch cartoon featuring Edward as a spider and Gladstone as a fly, wrangling over the development of the Channel Tunnel, which Edward was building.  Eventually, to Edward’s great disappointment, parliament ordered him to stop building the tunnel because they were afraid of French invasion, and the project didn’t progress again till the late 1980s.  When the tunnel finally opened in 1994, we were invited on the inaugural trip as Edward’s descendants.

The large portrait at the top of the stairs is of Harriette soon after her marriage to Henry Worsley-Taylor, and the largest portrait on the stairs is of Henry later in life.  Below Henry is his father, James Worsley (who was later to become James Worsely-Taylor when he inherited the estate).  The portraits between Harriette and Henry are of John and Anne Taylor.  The smaller portraits show James Worsely later in life and Dorothea Worsley-Taylor as a child.  Between them is a photo of James Worsley-Taylor, son of Henry and father of Dorothea.  The samplers on the stairs are also related to the family.  One of them was done by Alice Clegg, who went on to marry James Worsley and is my great-great-great grandmother, and the one below that is by her sister Jennet Clegg.  Above is a sample by Harriot Mellor, sister of Mary Watkin and my great-great-great-great aunt.  The poem sampler was done by a tenant for James Worsley as a gift for him.

In the downstairs hall are a few documents and memorials relating to the family, as well as a photograph of Henry.  The landscape above the chest of drawers shows the view from Moreton Hall.