Woolton Hall

It is unknown who owned the land on which Woolton Hall now stands during the Middle Ages, but its owners during the Tudor period, the Brettarghs of Little Woolton, may have acquired it from a family named de Woolton. From the Brettarghs it passed to the Broughton family, and was in 1704 sold to Richard Molyneux, later fifth viscount Molyneux. Molyneux's widow died at Woolton Hall in 1766 and the house was soon after sold to a Mr Booth, who in 1772 sold it to Nicholas Ashton, a former High Sheriff of Lancashire. Shortly afterwards, Ashton commissioned the noted architect Robert Adam to remodel and expand the building. The hall remained in the Ashton family until 1865, when Nicholas' grandson…

The ground floor of the north wing originally contained three principal rooms; a salon in the eastern three bays, the tapestry room in the centre, and the drawing room in the western three bays. The bay between the salon and tapestry room contained lobbies and a staircase. The rooms were approximately 5.2m high and originally had coved ceilings which made them higher still. The tapestry room and were combined into one room before World War Two. All three rooms were decorated with eighteenth century bolection oak panelling with classical pilasters. The salon was at the junction of the north and east wings, and the wall between it and the rest of the east wing was a surviving fragment of the…