It was a thing of beauty.
Built over five years at a cost of £100,000 – the equivalent of £9.7m today, the Elizabethan and Gothic style mansion was faced with pink-red Hollington Stone from a quarry on Staffordshire moorlands.
Set in magnificent gardens with a huge lake it was three storeys high with a family wing and one for servants. In its heyday it hosted royalty, leading political figures, and captains of industry. Yet in an odd twist, tons of its demolished stonework would later end up being used to build council houses.
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Worsley New Hall was constructed between 1839 and 1845 by architect and landscape gardener Edward Blore, and was one of the homes of Francis Egerton, The 1st Earl of Ellesmere.
Queen Victoria visited the mansion twice. The first time was in 1851 when she was accompanied by one of Britain’s greatest military commanders, the 1st Duke of Wellington – whose tactics secured victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. The Duke was later twice Prime Minister.
The pair arrived at the New Hall by specially-built barge which had travelled along the Bridgewater Canal from Patricroft railway station. Queen Victoria visited again for several days in the summer of 1857, while attending the Art Treasures Exhibition in Manchester. It attracted 1.3m visitors over five months.
In memory of the Duke of Wellington, who had died in 1852, she planted an American Redwood tree in the Hall’s lawn.
In 1869 Edward VII, when he was Prince of Wales, and Queen Alexandra, visited the Hall. They returned in 1909 after they had opened Manchester Royal Infirmary to inspect the Territorial Army’s East Lancashire division on the Hall grounds. Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli also visited.
The Hall’s formal landscaped gardens were set out in the early 1840s and added to over the next 50 years. There were six terraced gardens by 1857 separated by stone balustrades, and linked with steps and gravel paths. At the centre of one terrace was a bronze fountain designed by Val d’Osne that had been displayed at The Great Exhibition in London in 1851.
There was a croquet lawn and tennis court, landscaped parkland and a boating lake. The lake was enlarged by 1875, and featured an island reached by a footbridge.
The grand rooms of the New Hall were used as wards during the First World War when John Egerton, the 4th Earl of Ellesmere allowed the British Red Cross to use it for injured troops. The hall’s ten-acre kitchen gardens, created to grow fruit and vegetables, provided food for the soldiers and had ample ground for recreation. It closed as a hospital in 1919.
The beginning of the end for the Hall came in 1923 when it was sold for £3.3m to Bridgewater Estates – a group of Lancashire businessmen. They tried to sell it without success.
The War Office took over part of the Hall and its grounds during the Second World War. Soldiers dug training trenches in the grounds and later members of the “Dad’s Army” Home Guard used it to practise street fighting.
The Hall was also used to house evacuees from Dunkirk and in 1944, American soldiers about to be sent on the D-Day landings.
But in September 1943, a fire badly damaged the top floor of the New Hall. It had also been wrecked during the military occupation, with windows broken, interior furnishings used for firewood, and the Leigh Road entrance gates damaged. It was also decaying due to dry rot and subsidence due to local mining.
The Hall was sold to a scrap merchant from Ashton-in-Makerfield, Sydney Littler, for £2,500. Demolition started in 1946, and by 1949 the hall had been razed to the ground level, with debris used to fill in the basements. An estimated 800 tons of stone from the Hall was used to construct council houses in Yorkshire.
In 1951 a bunker was dug into the hillside on land at the Hall when the potential of a nuclear strike by a Joseph Stalin-led Soviet Russia was deemed to be at its height.
It was built by the War Office as an anti-aircraft operation and was part of a national network of defences which included an alternative seat of government to the House of Commons – underground at Box Hill near Corsham in Wiltshire.
The two-storey square structure is a main operations room surrounded by eight reinforced concrete rooms and a viewing gallery. It would have had its own electricity supply and ample space for stores of food.
But, as nuclear technology advanced during the Cold War, so defence policies changed.
It became clear a nuclear attack would come not from bombs being dropped by planes, but by inter-continental ballistic missiles, and the austerity of the 1950s led to defence budget cuts.
By 1956, the bunker was being used as a Royal Navy store, but by 1961 it had been transferred to the local authorities as a control centre in the event of crisis and by 1968 it was closed.
Through the 1970s to the early 1980s it was used by Greater Manchester Fire Service. Then in 1985 it was leased to the Worsley Rifle and Pistol Club who turned it into a shooting range, before Peel Investments acquired it in 2000.
In April 2009 one of several raves was held in the bunker attracting thousands of people. Due to extensive vandalism both entrances were eventually blocked up. It has remained empty ever since.
The cleared site of the New Hall and gardens remained in the ownership of Bridgewater Estates Ltd until 1984 when the company was acquired by Peel Holdings, now called Peel Land and Property. A racecourse and a hotel were proposed for the site by Peel but came to nothing.
Then, in 2015 the Manchester Evening News revealed land next to the site was to become the country’s fifth national gardens to be run by the Royal Horticultural Society. Delayed by Covid, the £44m scheme eventually opened as RHS Bridgewater in May 2021. Salford Council invested £19m in the project – including purchasing land from Peel.
Now Worsley New Hall’s history is to be an inspiration for an artist in residence at RHS Bridgewater.
Dr Yan Wang Preston will begin her residency with research and development, focusing on the New Hall site, an area of the garden that is currently largely off-limits to the public.
Daniel Atherton, RHS regional interpretation coordinator, said: “This part of the garden holds a fascinating history, shaped by the estate’s rich past, from its industrial roots to its horticultural rebirth. The project will explore the hidden stories within this cosmopolitan wilderness revealing the connections between nature, history, and diverse cultures around the world.”
A public programme starting in March 2025 will feature workshops and a pop-up display at RHS Garden Bridgewater. The culmination of the artist’s work will be presented in the spring and summer of 2026, when her new outdoor installations will be showcased within the garden. In autumn 2026, a final exhibition will be held at Salford Museum and Art Gallery.
Yan Wang Preston is an award-winning artist known for her stunning photographic projects that highlight the relationship between humans and the natural world. Her past works include Mother River, a photographic series documenting the entire 6,211km length of China’s Yangtze River, and a year-long project in which she photographed the same rhododendron bush on the South Pennine Moors every other day.
Speaking about the residency, she said: “I’m delighted to have this opportunity to work with RHS Bridgewater. Plants and flowers enrich our lives with so much beauty and vitality. Like people, they come from long journeys full of fascinating stories.”
Based in West Yorkshire, Yan Wang Preston is also a passionate gardener with a particular fondness for peonies, rhododendrons, and water lilies. She is a lecturer in photography at the University of Huddersfield and has won numerous prestigious awards, including the Royal Photographic Society’s inaugural Photographer of Environmental Responsibility Award in 2023.
The Artist in Residence programme is part of the University of Salford’s wider commitment to promoting creativity and healthy living.
Lindsay Taylor, curator of the University of Salford Art Collection, said: “We are so excited to be partnering with RHS Bridgewater, which is right on our doorstep. I’ve long admired Yan’s incredible work, especially her focus on the natural world, and we’re thrilled to see this collaboration come to life.”
For more information about the RHS Garden Bridgewater Artist in Residence programme and upcoming events, click here.
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