Abram Hall: The Ancient Manor House of Abram
Abram Hall was one of three ancient moated houses in the township of Abram, the others being Bamfurlong Hall and Bickershaw Hall. Although the original building disappeared more than two centuries ago, its history can be traced through medieval records and the estate deeds examined by John Leyland for his book Memorials of Abram, published in 1882.
Leyland’s account remains the principal source for the history of the hall. He was given permission to inspect the Abram Hall estate deeds by Henry Jackson Whitley, whose family then owned the property. Leyland nevertheless recognised that the surviving documentary record was incomplete and that later research might fill some of its gaps or correct errors.
The manor of Abram
The township was originally known as Adburgham, subsequently as Abraham and finally as Abram. The family associated with the manor adopted the same changing forms of the name, appearing in records as de Edburgham, de Adburgham, Abraham and Abram.
Leyland identified Richard de Edburgham as the earliest known member of the family. According to the medieval record known as the Testa de Nevill, Richard held four bovates of land by a grant associated with King Henry II, who reigned between 1154 and 1189. He paid an annual rent of four shillings to the Crown and gave one-third of his holding in alms.
This does not establish that Abram Hall itself was standing in the twelfth century, but it demonstrates that a family bearing the township’s name possessed land there from an early period.
The hall was traditionally described as a moated brick mansion which existed during the reign of Henry VI, between 1422 and 1461. It occupied one of the few areas of raised ground in an otherwise low-lying and comparatively flat township.
Its owners were lords of the manor, although Leyland noted that the manor did not extend over the whole of Abram township.
The Abram family
References to the early family are scattered through medieval legal and administrative records.
William de Abraham served as a juror at an inquisition held following the death of Richard Atherton in March 1387. John de Adburgham and his wife Alice were recorded in 1407, while Gilbert de Adburgham held the estate during the early fifteenth century.
Gilbert was named as the first juror at an inquisition held following the death of Sir Richard de Kighley in January 1416. He had two sons, John and William, and a daughter, Cicely, who married Robert Hindley of Hindley Hall.
The family was also involved in a serious local dispute. A Duchy Court writ alleged that Gilbert and his sons had entered the estate of Richard del Lache at Adburgham with an armed company. A proclamation was ordered forbidding anyone from assisting them or acting against the King’s peace.
Gilbert’s son John succeeded to Abram Hall and married Margaret, sister and co-heiress of Robert Boydell of Dodleston in Cheshire. Later generations included another Gilbert, whose daughter Constancia married Henry Byrom of Byrom.
The arms attributed to the Abram family in the 1567 Visitation of Lancashire were described as a silver shield bearing a black chevron between three red, triple-towered castles. Leyland cautioned that these arms had not been formally registered, while another source gave the family an entirely different design.
Abram Hall and its estate in 1598
The earliest detailed description of the estate found by Leyland dates from 1598. It consisted of:
- The manor and manor house
- Ten houses or messuages
- Ten tofts or building plots
- A windmill
- Ten gardens
- Ten orchards
- One hundred acres of arable land
- Twenty acres of meadow
- One hundred acres of pasture
- Ten acres of woodland
- Rents payable from other properties
Abram Hall was therefore more than a private residence. It was the administrative and agricultural centre of a sizeable estate containing farms, cottages, orchards, woodland and its own windmill.
Thomas and Mary Abraham
Thomas Abraham appears to have been the last male representative of the original family. In 1574 he was assessed for his lands in Abram and Hindley and was required to provide arms for the military levy.
Thomas and his wife Mary had two daughters. Susan, the elder daughter, married Henry Launce, while the younger daughter, Mary, married Philip Langton.
An estate settlement dated 10 December 1598 secured the property to Mary Abraham during her lifetime. It was then to pass to Susan Launce and her heirs. If Susan’s line failed, the estate would pass to Mary Langton and her descendants.
Mary Abraham was also associated with the origins of education in the district. She provided £90 towards the establishment of a free school for Hindley and Abram. Although this was not enough to build a school immediately, her gift formed the foundation of the institution which eventually became Hindley and Abram Grammar School.
With the end of the male line, Abram Hall passed out of the family which had carried the township’s name for several centuries.
The Launce and Gerrard families
Through Susan Abraham, the estate descended to the Launce family. Abraham Launce was in possession during the middle of the seventeenth century.
In July 1649 a group of tenants and landholders entered into an agreement with Abraham Launce concerning properties within the estate. The following day Launce executed another deed involving William Gerrard of Garswood, son and heir of Sir William Gerrard of Bryn.
Abraham Launce died around 1660 without a male heir. The estate subsequently came into the possession of William Gerrard of Bryn.
On 16 September 1667 William Gerrard and his wife Ann sold Abram Hall to Richard Hilton of Westleigh for £1,505. By this time the estate was smaller than it had been in 1598.
The conveyance included the hall, demesne lands and a number of named fields, including Barn Hey, the Spring, Lady Croft, Great Mill Hey, Abraham Meadow, Little and Great Horse Hey and Great and Little Broad Hey.
It also included two farms and two pews in Wigan Parish Church which had traditionally belonged to the “ancient Capital Messuage of Abraham Hall”. The possession of private or reserved pews reflected the social standing of the family occupying the hall.
The purchase was subject to the right of Elizabeth Massey, formerly the wife of Abraham Launce, to occupy the hall and its lands for the remainder of her life.
The Crooks of Abram Hall
In 1682 Richard Hilton placed the estate in trust. Under the settlement, it eventually passed through his daughter Abigail, who had married Thomas Crook of Hoole.
The Crook family became closely identified with Abram Hall. Thomas Crook probably lived there from the death of Richard Hilton until his own death. His will included charitable provision for poor inhabitants of Abram and neighbouring townships.
His widow Abigail made a gift of £12, the interest from which was to be distributed among the poor. Other benefactors followed her example, helping to create a permanent fund known as the Abram charities.
Thomas and Abigail had two sons, Caleb and Richard, together with several daughters. Caleb and Richard both died without children. Lydia Crook married John Clayton of Little Harwood Hall, Margaret married Liverpool and Allerton merchant John Percival, and Abigail married Bolton lawyer John Andrews.
Richard Crook married Martha Hollinshead at Alderley Church in Cheshire on 20 November 1706. He was associated with Presbyterianism and built a Presbyterian chapel at Hindley in 1700. In 1717 he conveyed the chapel, its site and the adjoining buildings to trustees.
Abram Hall was therefore connected with both local charitable provision and the growth of Nonconformist worship in Hindley.
The Clayton and Arrowsmith ownership
The estate eventually passed to the Clayton family through the marriage of Lydia Crook and John Clayton.
John Clayton served as a juror during the Jacobite trials held at Manchester in 1694. He was also a governor of Blackburn Grammar School from 1682 until his death in 1721.
Leyland stated that a Thomas Clayton later sold the estate to Peter Arrowsmith. However, his printed account gives the date as 1705, which cannot be reconciled with the family sequence that he describes. It is likely to be a printing or transcription error, and the actual conveyance requires confirmation from the original deeds.
Peter Arrowsmith or his descendants retained the property until the early nineteenth century.
The disappearance of the original hall
Leyland recorded that the original Abram Hall was demolished about a century before he wrote in 1882. This suggests that the old mansion disappeared during the later eighteenth century.
A substantial farmhouse was erected on its site. Although this continued to carry the Abram Hall name, it was not the medieval or Tudor manor house.
Leyland described several physical remains which were still visible in his time. An ancient bridge crossed the moat, a large part of which remained open, while the old stone gateposts continued to stand in their original positions.
A later visitor recorded that approximately half of the moat still contained water. The bridge and gateposts were then described as reminders of the “vanished glory” of the former manor house.
No reliable illustration of the original hall is presently known. Its description as a moated brick mansion suggests a substantial late-medieval residence, but its precise appearance cannot be established from the available evidence.
John Whitley and Abram Hall
In 1828 Peter Arrowsmith sold the Abram Hall estate to John Whitley for £4,200.
Whitley came from a successful Ashton-in-Makerfield family involved in hinge manufacturing. He acquired the title of lord of the manor of Abram and became an important figure in the nineteenth-century development of the district.
He appears to have lived at Brookside House on Bickershaw Lane rather than in the farmhouse occupying the old hall site. Nevertheless, his principal landed property in the township was the Abram Hall estate.
In the 1830s Whitley entered into partnership with Abraham Ackers of Bickershaw Hall. Their firm, Ackers, Whitley and Company, worked coal beneath the Abram and Bickershaw estates. Mining was taking place by the mid-1830s, earlier than some later accounts suggested.
The company worked a number of relatively shallow pits and transported its coal towards Plank Lane. These early workings helped to begin the transformation of Abram from an agricultural township into a mining community.
The gift of land for Abram Church
John Whitley’s most enduring contribution to Abram was his gift of land for the construction of St John the Baptist’s Church.
The church was built on land forming part of the Abram Hall estate and opened in 1838. Whitley also provided the adjoining churchyard and a separate plot intended for a parsonage.
The parsonage was not constructed on the proposed site, and the land was later incorporated into an extension of the churchyard.
The church therefore represents an important surviving connection between the historic Abram Hall estate and the development of the modern village.
Whitley also constructed a public house beside the new church. This became the Buck’s Head Hotel. Although a commercial development, its position close to the church reflected the changes taking place on the former manorial estate during the nineteenth century.
The Whitley family
John Whitley died in 1838, the same year in which Abram Church opened. Ownership of the estate passed through his family.
When Leyland conducted his research, the owner was Henry Jackson Whitley, who lived at Biggleswade. It was Henry Jackson Whitley who allowed Leyland to inspect the deeds of the Abram Hall estate.
The survival of those deeds enabled Leyland to reconstruct a chain of ownership extending from the medieval Abram family through the Launce, Gerrard, Hilton, Crook, Clayton and Arrowsmith families to the Whitley's.
Abram Hall Farm
The farmhouse built on the site of the old manor continued to be known as Abram Hall or Abram Hall Farm. In more recent times the site has become associated with Abram Hall Riding Centre.
The continued use of the name has preserved the identity of the estate, but it is important to distinguish between three separate elements:
- The medieval and later moated manor house, demolished in the eighteenth century.
- The farmhouse subsequently constructed on or near its site.
- The modern farm and equestrian premises carrying the Abram Hall name.
The moat, bridge, surviving landscape features and possible archaeological remains are consequently of greater antiquity than the present buildings.
Abram Hall’s place in local history
Abram Hall was at the centre of the township’s history for several centuries. Its owners were associated with the medieval manor, agricultural development, education, charity, religion, church building and coal mining.
Through Mary Abraham, the estate was connected with the foundation of a free school for Hindley and Abram. Through Thomas and Abigail Crook, it became associated with charitable provision for the poor. Richard Crook connected it with Presbyterian worship in Hindley, while John Whitley provided the site for Abram Parish Church and participated in the early development of the local coal industry.
The original building has disappeared, but the history of Abram Hall survives in the landscape and in the institutions established or supported by its owners. John Leyland’s examination of the estate deeds preserved a history that might otherwise have been lost, making Memorials of Abram the essential starting point for understanding the ancient manor and its place in the development of Abram.
Gordon Dewar 2026
Sources:
- John Leyland, Memorials of Abram, privately printed by John Heywood, Manchester, 1882.
- Mining Days in Abram later recollections drawing upon Leyland’s work.
- Buck’s Head Hotel, Wigan Buildings.
- Brookside House, Wigan Buildings.