Some such ancestral hall we have occasionally encountered, in unlooked for quarters, in our native county of Lancaster, or in its smiling sister shire; and never without feelings of intense delight, rejoicing to behold the freshness of its antiquity, and the greenness of its old age. For, be it observed in passing, a Cheshire or Lancashire hall, time-honoured though it be, with its often renovated black and white squares, fancifully filled up with trefoils and quatrefoils, rosettes, and other figures, seems to bear its years so lightly, that its age, so far from detracting from its beauty, only lends it a grace; and the same mansion, to all outward appearance, fresh and perfect as it existed in the days of Good Queen Bess, may be seen in admirable preservation in the days of the youthful Victoria.
Such is Bramall—such Moreton, and many another we might instance; the former of these houses may, perhaps, be instanced as the best specimen of its class (and its class, in our opinion, is the best) to be met with in Cheshire, considered with reference either to the finished decoration of its exterior, rich in the chequered colouring we have alluded to, preserved with a care and neatness almost Dutch, or to the consistent taste exhibited by its possessor in the restoration and maintenance of all its original beauty within doors. As an illustration of old English hospitality (that real, hearty hospitality for which the squirearchy of this country was once so famous—ah! why have they bartered it for other customs less substantially English?) it may be mentioned, that a road conducted the passenger directly through the great hall of this house, literally “of entertainment,” where, if he listed, strong ale, and other refreshments awaited his acceptance, and courted his stay. Well might old King, the Cheshire historian, in the pride of his honest heart, exclaim, “I know divers men, who are but farmers, that in their housekeeping may compare with a lord or baron, in some countries beyond the seas;—yea, although I named a higher degree, I were able to justify it.” We have no such “golden farmers” in these degenerate days!
The mansion was originally built by Sir Ranulph de Rookwood (or, as it was then written, Rokewode), the first of the name, a stout Yorkist, who flourished in the reign of Edward IV, and received the fair domain and broad lands upon which the edifice was raised, from his sovereign, in reward for good service; retiring thither in the decline of life, at the close of the Wars of the Roses, to sequestrate himself from scenes of strife, and to consult his spiritual weal in the erection and endowment of the neighbouring church. It was of mixed architecture, and combined the peculiarities of each successive era. Retaining some of the sterner features of earlier days, the period ere yet the embattled manor-house peculiar to the reigns of the later Henries had been merged in the graceful and peaceable hall, the residence of the Rookwoods had early anticipated the gentler characteristics of a later day, though it could boast little of that exuberance of external ornament, luxuriance of design, and prodigality of beauty, which, under the sway of the Virgin Queen, distinguished the residence of the wealthier English landowner; and rendered the hall of Elizabeth, properly so called, the pride and boast of our domestic architecture.
The site selected by Sir Ranulph for his habitation had been already occupied by a vast fabric of oak, which he in part removed, though some vestiges might still be traced of that ancient pile. A massive edifice succeeded with gate and tower, court and moat complete, substantial enough one would have thought to have endured for centuries. But even this ponderous structure grew into disuse, and Sir Ranulph’s successors, remodelling, repairing, almost rebuilding the whole mansion, in in the end so metamorphosed its aspect, that at last little of its original and distinctive character remained. Still, as we said before, it was a fine old house; though some changes had taken place for the worse, which could not be readily pardoned by the eye of taste; as, for instance, the deep embayed windows had dwindled into modernised casements, of lighter construction; the wide porch, with its flight of steps leading to the great hall of entrance, had yielded to a narrow door; and the broad, quadrangular court was succeeded by a gravel drive. Yet despite of all these changes, the house of the Rookwoods, for an old house (and, after all, what is like an old house?), was no undesirable, or uncongenial abode for any worshipful country gentleman “who had a great estate.”