Jewel is back in Stockport’s historic crown
THE Tudor splendour of Bramall Hall will once more be open to the public from the end of this month thanks to a £1.6m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
Long the jewel of Stockport’s places of resort, sitting in sweeping parkland above the Lady Brook, it is a classic black and white mansion with late medieval origins famous as a typical Cheshire ‘magpie’ hall. If you’ve never been go and visit it.
The first family here were the de Bromhales, succeeded by the Davenports who married an heiress. Their thief’s neck crest has a variety of explanations but the most credible refers to the power of life and death the Davenports held over felons they arrested in their hereditary role as Sergeants of Macclesfield Forest, which stretched as far as Stockport in those days.
Venison was then a prized delicacy, not for the likes of us peasants, and the forest abounded in deer. Venison pasties were invented in Cheshire, where the best archers came from and their practice in poaching made this a prime recruiting area for the wars with France.
Visitors to the stable block at Bramhall will notice a new gift shop and cafe which faces onto the walled garden providing al -fresco dining. There is also a new classroom facility for schools and lots more information for other visitors.
The hall has been closed for some time while work was carried out with only limited ‘hard hat’ tours bookable for small parties. Now there is increased access for the disabled to ground floor rooms in the hall, better toilets and a giant ‘family tree’ describing the generations who have lived at the black and white mansion, owned and run by Stockport Council.
The last residents after the Davenports were Charles and Mary Nevill, rich textile magnates who carried out many restorations and improvements at the essentially Tudor structure in late Victorian times. After them John Davies, a successful brewer, and his wife lived briefly at the hall and his strange fate is described in the latest summer issue of Stockport Heritage Magazine out now.
The magnificent Italianate moulded plaster ceilings in the Withdrawing Room have been repaired and painted, hundreds of panes of stained glass in the lattice windows have been cleaned, furniture and objet’s d’art have been restored.
You can visit the Victorian servants quarters and see their garret bedrooms and Mary Nevill’s cosy parlour where she stitched samplers. Some Elizabethan bed hangings are still in the hall embroidered by Dame Dorothy Davenport ‘Feare God and Sleep in Peace.’
The place has always been haunted and the Tudor ghosts just can’t wait to get back inside and carry on haunting.
A ticketed grand reopening is planned for July 30 and 31. »»All the latest heritage stories are in the summer issue of Stockport Heritage Magazine now in newsagents, bookshops, WH Smiths and Co-ops or from stockport heritagemagazine.co.uk.