Buildings of Interest

Description

Hall Farmhouse, now 2 houses. Datestone, probably not original, reads "BUILT 1663"

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From 1865 it was the headquarters of the Kirkless Hall Coal and Iron Co, but more importantly, it was the home of my Great Great Grandfather who was the Managing Farmer for the Estate at the time.

John Gostellow

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Kirkless Hall, located in Aspull is a historic house that sits alongside the Leeds Liverpool canal near top lock, part of an impressive series of 13 locks that start at Ince.

With a date stone of 1663, the Hall was once at the centre of a 59 acre estate and was probably built upon a much older site. The entirety of the estate would have extended at one time beyond the border of Aspull and covered parts of Ince and Wigan Town centre. Its hard to imagine now, but at one time the estate would have had gardens, orchards and many other smaller buildings housing staff and livestock.

In the early 18th century the estate was owned by Richard Houghton, but following his death, Kirkless was sold to a Thomas Kendrick, and then passed on to his Son, John Kendrick.

During the late 18th century, Kendrick began to sink pits on the estate, keen to take advantage of the rich coal and cannel seam that lay beneath his feet, and in 1773 a pumping engine was erected, so beginning Kirkless Halls transformation from ‘Historic Home of great Antiquity’ to a thriving hub of industry.

The company expanded rapidly and changed hands a number of times and by the 1860s it had come under the ownership of the Lindsay family, and had been renamed the ‘Wigan Coal and Iron Company’

All the while, Kirkless Hall itself remained, once a fine family home, surrounded by trees and gardens, now, a hive of manufacturing, housing offices and surrounded by slag heaps and smoking furnaces. If only walls could really talk, what stories could this building tell us?

Today, long after the coal and iron industry have faded away, and the canal is no longer part of the industrial infrastructure, Kirkless Hall stands proudly alongside the waterway we now use recreationally, for walks and leisurely barge cruising, a reminder of Wigans more ancient history, and remarkably still standing when so many of the other historic halls in the borough have been lost.

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