The Great Hall at Mains is a timber-framed building, built to replicate an original Banqueting Hall that was on this exact spot over 500 years ago and - despite its new appearance, beneath us, lie several hundred years of history...if not more.

The Tudor Influence

Mains Hall
circa 1853

Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, much land was handed over to the local lords. It was at some time in the early 16th century that we pick up the history of the estate once more. In 1536, Mains Hall became the property of the Earl of Derby and later, to Alice Countess of Derby, who subsequently sold it to William Hesketh in 1602.

During this Tudor and Elizabethan era, we know little of the fate of Mains Hall, except that there appears to have been several generations of the Hesketh family residing here throughout and beyond, into the Stuart period.
During this time, the family took pleasure in restoring much of the old estate. It was Thomas Hesketh, along with his second wife Margaret, who restored the old Chapel and barns here. Evidently proud of their restoration, they left their mark in the brickwork, which we can still see today, along with the date – 1686.

It is likely therefore, that a member of the Hesketh family instated the original Great Hall during their time here. A local historian, when writing on his visit to the Hall in 1853, speaks of the original Tudor Banqueting Hall thus:

'...on the west, the wing now destroyed, a very antique building, within which was a hall-part, having a huge open chimney, and wainscotted with fluted oak of the reign of Henry VIII, now rotting unheeded in the garrets of the hall.'

Here, when workmen were demolishing the 'old' Great Hall, they discovered a priest hole beside the huge fireplace:

'…a most uncomfortable cell, both dark and confined, where the wretched inmate, Dr. Allen, Father Campion, and the persecuted priest of Titus Oates, in succession, stretched his limbs on the straw that was found still littering the floor.'