Padeswood Hall was an eight-bedroom home owned by a succession of wealthy people. These tend to be very easy to research, more so than your average house, because the owners usually have a few sprinkles of historic prominence, being active in their local community and leaving a trail of records for the casual Googler to lap up. They may even have their own Wikipedia page. So, hand on heart, I do not know how so many urbex "reports" got this one so wrong. I know I shouldn't be surprised because urbexers get everything wrong, but I guess I still had some slither of faith in their intelligence. But all it takes is for one person to get it wrong, and another person to copy and paste that, and it spawns some farcical cascade of wrongness.
The common story, regurgitated without verification by urbexers, is that Padeswood Hall was built, and lived in, by a man named William Fiddler in 1865.
But this is false. He didn't build it and he certainly didn't live here, which makes things slightly awkward for all those "paranormal investigators" on Youtube who claim to have met his ghost.
Here's a shot of the hall from 1910, albeit from a different angle.
(photo not mine, obviously)
The William Fiddler connection seems to have come from the fact that he owned the nearby colliery from 1865 to 1880. It's a bit like saying that John James Sainsbury built and lived in every house that happens to be near a Sainsbury's.
Typical urbex reports claim that this house was built in 1865 and that William Fiddler left in 1900, whereupon it was passed down through a succession of conveniently nameless people until 1949. We'll see how true that is. But for now, forget about William Fiddler. I can't find any evidence that he was ever here. I am going to tell the story of Padeswood Hall, as truthfully as I can based on historic documents, and he won't be relevant at all.
Let's slip inside!
Apparently, just prior to being abandoned, the house was a training facility for a cement factory, and that is reflected by some of the equipment and paperwork dotted around. Unfortunately they have removed most of the grandeur that would have once made this place look homely and spectacular, reducing it to an office block with the occasional pretty bits.
Despite the claim that it was built in 1865, the first records of the hall that I can find are actually from 1850, when a man called William Hancock sold some farm equipment from here.
It seems that William Hancock was the first person to live here. He was a bit of a headache to research because he married a woman named Mary Ann, and their son who was also called William married a woman named Marianne, and then a Thomas Hancock who later becomes relevant has a father called William, and both of these William's have sons called Thomas.
But I think I unravelled this mess. The Hancock family tree can actually be traced all the way back to a Knight called Richard Haycock who was born in 1506. He's allegedly the Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather of a "John Haycock" whose name appears on the declaration of independence. Curiously, William Hancocks Great Grandfather is a John, and he happens to be Sir Richard Hancock's Great-Great-Great-Great Grandson, but I don't know if this is the same John. Given that Richard allegedly fathered fourteen children, he probably has about sixty Great-Great-Great-Great Grandsons called John. It's probably the dullest name in the universe but people keep insisting on using it.
William was born in 1799, so he would have been 51 when he popped up in historic records selling farm equipment from this house. Another record from 1852 makes mention of a Jane Hancock dying of an illness at the age of 37, explicitly saying that she was a relative of "Mr Hancock of Padeswood Hall."
The 1851 census shows that eleven people lived here. Not only did William live with his wife, Mary Ann, but also with two of his adult children, Thomas and Caroline. In addition to that there was Caroline's own husband John Nunns, and their two kids, Annie and John James. The rest are servants and a nineteen-year-old Nurse named Louisa, indicative that someone in this household had health issues.
Caroline and John Nunns seem to have moved to Liverpool by 1853, where they continued their favourite activity of fornicating, eventually having thirteen children. Thomas married in 1855 and presumably moved out of Padeswood Hall, only to die in 1857. He was only 26.
By 1861, William and Mary Ann seem to be living alone with their servants, but they seem to regularly entertain the Nunns brood, which is fair enough, really. Thirteen children must be a lot to handle. Let the grandparents take them for a bit!
Padeswood Hall must have felt a bit like a creche back then.
But William Hancock died in 1862, and Mary Ann moved to Dublin, where she passed away three years later. John and Caroline Nunns also moved to Dublin, taking the hardest-working womb in Cheshire and their swarm of crotchfruit with them, although some of them would make their way to Canada and America once they became adults. Annie would return to England to visit her cousins. John James Nunns would serve in the military in South Africa in the 1870s. And if we look at a few of the other kids who stayed here, there's a Fred Hancock who also joined the Canadian military in the 1880s, Ernest Hancock who would become a reverend in Canada, and Lester Hancock who was a farmer. It's a real mixture of outcomes scattered across the world, and it's weird to think that all of them had childhood memories of this place.
With Padeswood Hall vacant, it seems that it still stayed within the ownership of the Hancock family and was regularly rented out. Records from 1867 tell of a resident named Mr Timberley entering a ploughing competition, and then records from 1870 tell of how a resident named Mr Trimlee had his herd wiped out by foot and mouth disease. It's entirely possible that these are the same guy, and that there's been a mis-print somewhere, but at no point is a first name ever given, so it's hard to dig any deeper.
I quite like this blue room. Perhaps once this is where William Hancock and his wife sat and ate breakfast with their children and grandchildren.
By 1872, Padeswood Hall was occupied by a magistrate named Alexander Fair Jones, and his wife Amelia. They had three children, named Archibald, Alex and Norman. Alexander had been a captain in the military, and spent a lot of time traveling around various territories of the British Empire. They spent some time in Edinburgh where Alexander worked with the Discharged Soldiers Society.
His eldest son Archibald was actually born in India and would also follow his fathers footsteps, first into military when he fought in the Boer War, and also into law, albeit reluctantly.
Due to the nature of Alexander's work, most records just talk about him being in attendance of various meetings. He was also a member of the local horticultural society, of which William Hancock Jr (son of the other William Hancock) was the vice president.
He gets a few more mentions in reports about local trials, including being involved in the conviction of a man for sexual assault and attempted rape in 1875. He was forty when he and his family moved out of Padeswood Hall.
Alas, I cannot find a photo of Alexander, but I have found a photo of his son Archibald!
(Photo of Archibald Jones not mine, obviously)
Now obviously Archibald looked nothing like this at the time he lived here. He was actually only eleven when the family moved out in 1878.
Archibald had hoped to fight in World War One, but he was disappointed when they gave him the role of training troops for other frontline battalions. He made the most of it though, and he did eventually get to see France and visit the frontline on one occasion, which he described as "one burst of sunshine to relieve two and a half dull years."
Archibald died on the frontline, but it wasn't the Germans that got him. His real enemy came from within, when he died suddenly from a stroke in 1917. At least he got to see the frontline. Throughout the war, that was all he wanted.
There is apparently a memorial to Alexander, Amelia and Archibald in Chester Cathedral. The other two children are curiously absent.
The other Alex, eight years old when the family left this house, joined the Navy, fought in World War 1, and died in a nursing home in 1938. But poor Norman seemed to have the most unfortunate story of them all. He was only six when the family left this house, and as of 1901 he was institutionalised in a lunatic asylum in Glasgow. From there the trail runs cold. I don't have records for his death. I don't even know why he was institutionalised. In 1901 he may have had serious mental health issues or he may have just been gay or autistic.
Either way, it's sad that this happened to him. His family get a nice big memorial in a cathedral and he is just wiped away.
The yellow room, as with the blue room, is quite pleasant and would have once been the dining room or lounge for the families that lived here. I can totally picture Alexander chilling out with his wife while the three boys played. Perhaps sitting back, smoking a pipe and reading the newspaper, saying to Amelia "Hey, look, I'm mentioned again. Hopefully 150 years from now, people researching the house will be able to see that I lived here, instead of writing nonsense about William Fiddler."
Poor Alexander.
In January 1879, an article mentioned that Padeswood Hall was now in the occupation of Major Rigby, and some rudimentary research revealed this to be Walter Ashton Rigby. If you're familiar with Liverpool at all, you may have seen his dad, Thomas. There's only a pub named after him.
(Image not mine)
Thomas Rigby is said to have had very humble beginnings as a barman working for the brewery owners, Robert and Elizabeth Blezard, but he ended up making a fortune owning his own empire of pubs and hotels, while maintaining a friendship with his former employers. He also had his fingers in local politics, and played an active role in obtaining a water supply for Liverpool, resulting in Lake Vyrnwy in Wales.
His son William had actually been living with the Blezards in 1871, and married their daughter Mary in 1874. He was 29 when they moved into Padeswood Hall.
And if you think Caroline Nunns had her hands full with thirteen children, Mary Blezard beat her record with a whopping fifteen, popping one out every year or so. It sounds pretty bonkers to me. Who has the time and energy for that many children?
Their firstborn sadly died in infancy, but when they came to live here in 1879 they already had four more, Reginald, Walter Jr, John and Hannah, ages four, three, two and one. Poor Hannah was born disabled and would also die in infancy, but a fifth child, Thomas, was born in 1879.
I can't find any images of Walter, but here's Mary Blezard.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
The general plan seemed to be to merge Thomas Rigby's pub empire with the Blezard's brewery empire, and the marriage of Walter and Mary definitely seemed to be a push in that direction. Unfortunately Walter had no interest in the family business, and he hated the only Blezard that did, that being Mary's brother George.
The Rigby's were a popular couple in the local community, attending many a local shindig, garden party, flower show, birthday party or funeral. Walter entered his fair share of farming competitions, and genuinely seemed to love it, attending plenty of horticultural events. They provided table cloths for the local bazaar, and Walter allowed his fields to be used by contestants in farmer ploughing competitions. In April 1879 he also hosted a horse race in his field. This was only intended to be a small shindig with his mates, and not a public event, but word got around about it and about five hundred people supposedly showed up to watch.
As well as the original five children, the next batch of Rigby babies were born here in this house. Mary Louisa Rigby was born in 1881, following Thomas in 1879. This was actually the longest time Walter and Mary had lasted without having a child. But this didn't mean they were slowing down. William was born in 1882, followed by Robert in 1883, Violet in 1884 and Harold in 1885. They now had nine children. How was Mary even walking at this point? They also had nine servants living with them, so Padeswood Hall was full of activity.
So to talk about some of the Rigby children who lived here, Reginald is perhaps the most well-documented. I have photos of him too!
(Photo not mine, obviously)
Reginald married a woman named Millie in 1903, and they had three children before divorcing in 1928. Reginald fought in the first world war, and in 1929 he married his second wife, Kathleen.
Of the other Rigby kids, Walter Jr would move to South Africa, get married and then move to Canada. John, better known as Jack, had his occupation listed as "Gentleman" on census records. He also fought in World War 1. Thomas married and went to Australia. Mary Louisa married and moved to New Zealand.
There is a photo from her wedding that shows her, John and Walter Jr with a few other people.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
Mary Louisa and her husband are on the back left, while the two men in front of her are her brothers John and Walter. The other three people are unknown.
The next brother, Robert, married and went to Hull. I've not found much else on him, but his son got into motor sports.
Violet, on the other hand, caught tuberculosis and spent time in a sanitorium. Because she was quite a high-profile patient, they eventually had a wing named after her. Unfortunately this hospital no longer exists, but photos of Violet do!
(Photo not mine, obviously)
And that brings us to Harold, the last Rigby child to be born in Padeswood Hall.
Harold was pretty cool. He fought in World War 1, and in 1921 he made history in a weird, obscure and marvellous way, as the first person to cycle across the English channel. From what I can tell from various articles, he built some sort of "pontoon cycle." That is, a bike was fixed to a boat, and peddling the bike accelerated it across the water. What a marvellous human. I totally want a pontoon cycle.
Why is this not more widely known about??? It's fucking awesome!
According to the papers it took him about twelve hours to cross the channel, during which the water got choppy and he struggled with the weather. But he made it from Calais to Dover, albeit totally knackered, and a little bit wet. There's an image of him too, but it seems to be heavily edited and I'm not sure it can really be considered a photograph anymore.
(Image not mine, obviously)
Alas, Harold wouldn't remember Padeswood Hall. He was born in 1885, and the Rigby's would leave the following year. Some of the others born around that time, like Violet and Robert, probably wouldn't remember it either. But the likes of Reginald, who was eleven when the family left, would probably have fond memories of the place.
In 1886, it was announced that Walter and Mary Rigby were leaving Padeswood Hall. Perhaps this was purely because they had too many children for an eight-bedroom house, and the baby-factory wasn't closed yet despite the fact that Mary Rigby was now forty.
It was later advertised as a vacant property, with the article saying that enquiries should be made to "T L Hancock," which certainly seems to indicate that Padeswood never left the Hancock families ownership.
I'll throw in a photo of the Rigby's youngest daughter, Norah. She wasn't born here but she has a car, and that's pretty cool. I'm sure female motorists weren't that common back then.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
But I can't help but feel a bit sad for the Rigby's. After they moved away, Mary allegedly died during the birth of her fifteenth child in 1891, at the age of 45. It's said that she was actually the glue that held the Rigby family together. Without her it descended into a pit of dysfunction. Reginald, the oldest child and just sixteen when he lost his mother, would later tell his own son that he could not remember a breakfast where there wasn't a fight. No wonder they scattered across the world.
It's always sad when a shared family trauma drives the family apart. You'd think it would bring people closer together, but this sort of thing is often harder to navigate than people realise.
But I like to think that their memories of Padeswood would have been good, because they were here before their family cohesion fell apart. When a family breaks after a traumatic event, all the memories from before feel like a golden age.
The most notable thing that I could find during the Rigby's occupancy was the death of a man outside the house. In 1883 a 72-year-old man named James Brookfield seemingly fell into a pond and drowned. The Rigby's had nothing to do with it, but because their house was the closest, the body was taken into their home to be examined by the authorities, which probably wouldn't happen today.
There's a narrow, winding corridor at the back of the hall that I presume would have been used by the servants back in the day, perhaps leading to their accommodation block.
But now it leads to the best part of any abandoned building, the toilets!
Still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs!
There's still toilet roll!
Near the toilets are a few tiny back rooms that have been turned into offices.
Following the departure of the Rigby's, the home was lived in by a man named Thomas Henry Hancock, the grandson of the original William Hancock. In 1888, Thomas married a woman named Ursula Dunstan. He was 26 and she was just eighteen, which raises my eyebrows a bit. But by all accounts, she was better connected with all the rich bigwigs than he was. He was the director of the local brickworks that seems to have opened next to William Fiddlers colliery, but Ursula was the one who got the publicity. She'd attend local events, attend funerals, dive headfirst into any noble cause, and she seemingly did it all without him.
It seems that they moved into Padeswood Hall after their wedding, which was quite spectacular. They had a marching band escort them right down to the hall, where they had a huge dinner with all of their guests.
In 1894 there was some controversy when some exotic birds were spotted in the area. They are said to have looked like parrots but were silvery-grey with pink chests. I'm not a bird expert, so I don't know what they are. Thomas Hancock evidently wasn't a fan of these foreign invaders, because he shot one. He was criticised by a few angry letters to his local papers.
In 1906, for whatever reason, Thomas just sold everything he owned. The local papers said he was giving up the hall too. He invited six hundred butchers and farmers to a luncheon at Padeswood Hall where he sold all of his farm equipment, and all of his belongings. He and Ursula went to North Wales to live out the rest of their years.
Padeswood Hall didn't stay vacant for long after the Hancocks left. Throughout the 1910s it seems to have been occupied by a man named Robert Griffiths. The Hancock family must have still owned it though because in 1915 a man named Harry Hancock used Padeswood Hall to hold a meal for a bunch of military folks, celebrating that Cheshire had established a record for the greatest number of recruits in proportion to its population.
Because nothing's worth celebrating more than sending swarms of men to a massacre.
In 1911, Padeswood was once again the subject of some rather gruesome news when a homeless man named Joseph Green discovered a woman floating dead in a pond on the estate. She was later identified as Annie Gillidge, and once again her body was taken into the hall for examination. She still had money in her pockets and no sign of violence.
What's up with that? That's the second time this has happened. Is there some trip hazard right next to the pond or something?
Ooooh, a telesales office.
I have worked in telesales, and among my list of things that are more fun are "letting a rottweiler gnaw on my bollocks" and "wiping my arse with a cheese grater."
It's a job for sharks, and I'm really more like some kind of minnow. I just want to dash around and nibble stuff, and then flit away.
This office has a safe in it, which is quite intriguing.
In 1917 the papers mentioned a "Frank Marston of Padeswood Hall," but census data from 1921 reveals that he was just living at the nearby lodge building, not the hall itself.
His reason for being mentioned was that his son Rowland Beale Marston had come to live with him after being seriously injured in the war. Rowland had been fighting the Germans over in France when an enemy shell buried him under a pile of rubble. When he was found, he had a dislocated shoulder and had lost the ability to speak, although this did return.
The newspapers described his removal from the rubble as being "extricated before life was extinct," which is amazing phrasing. I guess this was before the newspapers descended into punchy trash for barely-literate Britain.
I can't find any photos of Rowland Marston, but I did find a portrait of his younger sister, Elizabeth.
(Image not mine, obviously)
There's something eerie about seeing artwork of children who have since grown old and died. I wonder who the artist was.
But back to Rowland. I find it interesting that if he hadn't been buried under all that rubble then he might well have been shot and killed. It may not have felt like it at the time, but that blast was his lucky break. As it stands, he made a full recovery at the Padeswood estate and then emigrated to Canada.
What is it with people from Padeswood going to Canada? It's practically a Padeswood colony at this point.
In 1919, the Hancock family sold Padeswood Estate to Flintshire council. The initial plan seems to be to build homes for returning soldiers and sailors, but eventually this idea was scrapped in favour of turning Padeswood Hall into an agricultural school.
The hall was old and needed some work doing in order to make it structurally adequate. They also installed electricity for the first time, getting rid of those old gas lamps of yesteryear.
But these changes took a lot longer than people had expected, and by 1927 people were starting to grumble.
But the school went ahead, having an opening ceremony in 1930, attended by Earl de la Marr. He made a speech about how he hated the common belief that educated boys and girls always sought careers in the city, leaving country life for those without job prospects. He wanted to kill this idea, pushing the agenda of educating people in the world of agriculture.
Padeswood Hall opened to students of both genders, taking an inaugural class of ten boys and ten girls, offering courses in crop growing, poultry keeping, bee keeping and dairy work.
It also got involved in local horticultural events, and flower shows, where one student shocked everyone with something that looked and felt just like a peach but tasted like an apple. Nobody was able to identify that mystery fruit.
The school also became the stomping ground of Harry L Jones, gardening enthusiast and expert in horticulture. Harry said at one of his lectures that the UK's gardens were a disgrace to the nation. People just don't know how to use these areas to their best potential, and most of them are just there, taking up space.
So outside of the schools agricultural curriculum, Harry would also hold lectures at Padeswood Hall for the general public to come along to. They typically lasted between forty minutes and an hour, and covered topics like cultivating lawns, growing vegetables, the benefits of a fruit and vegetable diet, maintaining a herbaceous border, and even things like building rock gardens. It's said that even experienced gardeners could learn something at his talks, and he seemed to really enjoy talking about it.
In 1931, only a year into its existence, the school came under fire from a council member named Sir John Eldon Bankes, who was a bit miffed by the expenditure being proposed for a residential wing to be built for students who lived further away. Bankes said that Padeswood Hall was unsuitable for an agricultural school. He claimed that there was nothing nearby to occupy the students during their downtime, and he also said that the soil was shite. He said they might as well be teaching them to grow crops in the Sahara.
These complaints were dismissed, purely because only a few decades ago Padeswood Hall had been one of the most successful farms in the area. The soil couldn't be that bad.
The school went from strength to strength, and students had various competitions on flower cultivation, cheese making, and producing the cleanest milk. Between 1936 and 1938, they had "Egg Laying Trials," which was a study to see what conditions produced the best eggs with the lowest chicken mortality rate.
Speaking of mortality, nobody drowned on the land in the 1930s! Wooo!!! But in 1934, a collie did fall down a mine shaft at the old colliery. A policeman tied a rope around his waist to bravely descend down the mine, and he did lift the collie to the surface. Unfortunately it died on the way up.
As you can see, the upper rooms of Padeswood Hall are all just as samey as downstairs. The soul was stripped out when they converted it. But I couldn't help but be delighted by the discovery of a giant crayon. It's not a functional crayon but presumably it had some practical purpose, given all the pegs in it.
In 1938 the future of Padeswood Hall was brought into question. It was finally conceded that maybe the soil was a bit shit, and maybe they should move to another site. But then war broke out, and further progress was delayed somewhat. It was announced in 1941 that the school would move as soon as the war ended. They were in for a bit of a wait.
In the meantime, any staff that weren't enlisted continued to do lectures for any locals who weren't enlisted. Harry Jones did a few on allotments and fruit bottling. His colleague, Miss Wrench, had her finger on the pulse and did talks on wartime cookery, for those trying to make ends meet with rations.
In 1943, Padeswood Hall sold all of its farming equipment and in 1944 the hall itself went up for sale, being snapped up in 1946 by a cement company, eager to cash in on all that post-blitz rebuilding that needed to happen. Adverts went out for carpenters and steel fixers, indicating that some renovation work was done to the hall, while locals have said that the land was swamped with construction vehicles as the cement plant went up. When Padeswood Hall reopened, it was some sort of safety training centre for the cement works. But as we can see, they don't use it. The building is just empty and derelict.
The calendar is dated 2006, which gives us a rough idea of when these offices were last used.
It's a silly amount of time to just leave this place vacant. It's a perfectly good building. It just needs a little TLC.
This office still has pictures hanging on the wall.
But the best part of Padeswood Hall was the cellar. That tends to be where all the historic stuff ends up in places like this, so naturally I just had to take a look.
In this case, Padeswoods cellar has loads of old documents. But it was all rather soggy. The floor had a few inches of stagnant water, with a few bits dotted around to use as stepping stones. There's not a single sheet of paper down here that doesn't have something growing on it, but it is possible to make out a few dates. These mainly seem to be dated from the 1990s.
There's probably loads of confidential documentation down here, but I didn't come prepared with the rubber gloves hazmat suit required to go leafing through it.
And that concludes Padeswood Hall. I'm disappointed to admit this, but in a world of copying and pasting without verification, I might well be the first urbexer to tell the truth about this place. That's not a flex. It's a tragedy. Someone got the history wrong years ago, and everyone else just lined up like lemmings. How did we get here? We have the entirety of our species recorded knowledge at our fingertips, and somehow we've become dumber.
But Padeswood Hall, despite having its soul and character ripped out by corporate renovations, still has some indications of its further glory, and it's nice to think that so many people called it home. It's an honour, as always, to talk about the families who lived here. From a photogenic standpoint, it's a teeny bit bleak.
But I think this is the first time I've ever researched rich families on the blog without uncovering some incest. Cheshire folks are apparently a bit more civilised.
My next blog is a big beautiful mill with some bats roosting in it, and I'm quite looking forward to it.
In the meantime, if you like my blogs and want to stay updated then the best way to do that, unfortunately, is to follow my social media platforms. Of course I'm on the big algorithmic hellscapes that are Instagram, Twitter and Boomer 4Chan, better known as Facebook. But I also really want to promote the likes of Bluesky, Vero and Cara, apps for creative people who just want to see the people they follow, and vice versa. Do you remember the good old days, when Instagram and Facebook actually showed you the things you wanted to see? We can have those days again. I'm on all those platforms so if you follow, maybe you'll see my blogs.
Anyway, thanks for reading!
Great read yet again
ReplyDelete