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Subject: Newspaper articles sent from Brunswick School
Date: Sat, 26 Jul 1997 18:45:19 +0100
From: "Colin Dutton" <Colin.Dutton@btinternet.com>
From Our Special Correspondent
DUTTON (Cheshire), Friday.
A MILE from this little Cheshire, village more than 200 tons of Tudor England is being prepared by skilled workmen for a 240-miles journey to East Grinstead, Sussex.
For 400 years Dutton Hall has stood as a witness to the skill of builders long since dead. But, unlike other victims of the housebreaker’s craft, it will rise again as the Sussex home of MR.J.A.Dewar, the racehorse owner.
The work of dismantling and re-assembling the hall has called for the most exact measurement and patient skill. Plans were prepared in duplicate, one to be retained on the site, and the other to be used in the assembly work. Photographs of the interior and exterior were taken, and every possible safeguard made to ensure that no hitch should take place.
Every piece of woodwork was numbered on the plan, the same number being chalked on the building. Each plan was then sub-divided, and the position of each baulk marked. Sketches and photographs are to assist in the re-construction.
Although outside of the hall is in the typical black-and-white half-timbered style of the 16th century it was originally built with the interstices filled with a ...... ...... (writing obliterated).
PATIENCE AND SKILL
During demolition work a " ghost chamber " was discovered half-way up the west wall, access to which was gained, it is believed, through a hole in the chimney wall.
This, with the minstrel gallery, will be restored in the completed building.
One of the marvels of Dutton Hall is a panelled oak ceiling, 22 feet by 7 feet, which has already been removed.
Some idea of the patience and skill of the medieval craftsman may be gained from the fact that the main door of the hall is decorated with roses and intricate designs carved out of the same piece of wood.
An official of the contractors, Messrs. Heywood and Wooster, of Bath, told me that the work would probably be completed here in three months. He said :- "Those builders certainly did a good job when the built Dutton Hall. When we removed the great pillars which carry the roof we found that some of them consisted of two large oak logs joined by tenons. And though they have been standing here for 400 years it was impossible to separate them, even by using a block and tackle".
GHOSTS LEFT BEHIND
HAUNTED MANSION MOVED
Through one of the most remarkable house-removing jobs ever carried out two ghosts have been rendered homeless. They are the ghosts of Dutton Hall, Runcorn, Cheshire, a wonderful Tudor mansion now no more, for it has been dismantled and removed to East Grinstead, In Sussex., to form the new east wing of Holmstall, the late Lord Dewar’s residence, which is shortly to be occupied by Mr.J.A.Dewar, his nephew.
Holmstall, with its magnificent racing studs and beautiful rock gardens, was inherited by " Lucky " Dewar, as he is known, by reason of his turf successes three years ago, along with a fortune of close on a million pounds. He decided to extend the modest dimensions of the house of his late uncle, and bought Dutton Hall for the purpose.
Bit by bit it has been transported to Sussex and reassembled. But nothing has been seen of the ghosts - one a Roman soldier who, tradition declares, used to gallop once a month across the paddock in front of the house, spear aloft; the other, a wraith-like being that used to haunt the minstrel gallery. Perhaps these phantom figures are hiking the 300 miles between Runcorn and East Grinstead in search of their old home.