Our tour of the ground floor of the Manor House visits some of its rooms. The rooms have been numbered to avoid confusion as some rooms have had different uses and names over the years.
If you want to go direct to a particular place, click on the list to the left.
Room 1 - The Entrance Hall
We start on the ground floor in the Entrance Hall.
The photograph on the right shows one of the Jacobean style staircases and how the entrance hall was furnished when the house was occupied by the Metcalfe family after WWII. There is a tour connecting the two staircases and giving access to the upstairs bedrooms and attics. When the house was first built, what is now the entrance hall was an open courtyard, formed by the two projecting wings and the Grand Hall, which ended roughly level with the timber columns you can see in the photo.
The photo on the right gives a view through to the Grand Hall and its fireplace, which is believed to be original. The room you can see on the Ground Floor Plan on the left of the front door (but not visible in the photographs) is the room used as a kitchen by the Metcalfe family. In Mr Parr's time it had been a study. It has a bay window which is not original.
Room 3 - The Dining room
Next we visit the Dining room / Library, on the left just past the staircase. This room was used as a dining room by the Metcalfe family, who had used the room next door as a kitchen. It was Mr Parr's dining room before that.
On the far side is a low, wide door with a raised carving of a lion on it. The shape and way the door is made suggests that it is Tudor and it could even be the original front door of the house, reused when the courtyard was filled in. On the wall at the right hand side of the door frame is a small piece of surviving painted decoration.
Room 4 - The Grand Hall
This view was taken looking back at the Entrance Hall from the Grand Hall and dates from Mr Parr's years. Note the candlesticks on the table. The elaborate ceilings shown in this photo had been replaced by the time the previous photo was taken.
The Grand Hall would have been the principal room of the house for the family when the house was first built.
At the end of the Grand Hall there is a doorway on the left leading to a lobby. This lobby originally lead to a service wing demolished after WWII. There was a scullery, a pantry, a lamp room and a cycle room.
Room 5 - The Lounge
Returning to the Grand Hall and crossing it we reach the Lounge. The oak beamed ceiling is original. The bow window was probably added at the start of the nineteenth century. It also has the original shutters. In this room you can see the damage caused by the rotting of the corner post in the far corner. The floor above has dropped by about 4 inches (100 mm).
In 1959 this room was used as a lounge or drawing room by the Metcalfe family. Previously it had been the library.
Room 9 - The Music room
We return through the lobby to the Music room which is the largest room in the house. It was added in the nineteenth century but has been much altered. In the photograph, taken in the 1930s, there is a magnificent fireplace installed by Mr Parr which was removed after WWII. There is a tradition that it came from Bold Hall, a Georgian mansion near Liverpool that was demolished in 1899. The windows were also altered at some stage, probably when the attic above was created by flooring it. Nineteenth century photographs show the windows extending into the roof.
Some of the many family portraits and furniture, which were returned to the Hesketh family under the terms of Mr Parr's will can be seen. Although called the Music Room on the plan, in Mr Parr's time it was the Drawing Room and it would have been here that Queen Mary was entertained on her brief visit.
Before redecoration there was evidence that the WWII occupants had left graffiti on the walls. Mr Metcalfe had his workshop in this room. Among his inventions was a pedal powered car.
Room 10 - Kitchen
At the end of the lobby are steps leading down to the room called the Chapel/Kitchen on the plan.
This was a nineteenth century addition but may replace an earlier kitchen range. The photo shows the kitchen in Mr Parr's time. Above the fireplace is a plaque displaying the family crest and motto of the Parr family 'Amour avecque Loiaulte'. There was quite a household to feed then. Besides Mr Parr, his aunt Mrs Nightingale and her two daughters there was a cook, a parlourmaid, a housemaid, a kitchenmaid and a nurse to feed. Although the plan shows this as a chapel it is aligned north south and not east west as a chapel would be. Mr Metcalfe believed it originally had been a refectory or dining room. He converted it into a garage.
There once was a narrow raised 'minstrel's tour' across the end above the door.
