Qualla: Bank Hall https://qualla.com/bank-hall en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:16 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/c/bank-hall-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Bank Hall https://qualla.com/bank-hall Bank Hall: Introduction https://qualla.com/bank-hall/ Photo credit Bankhall, CC BY-SA 3.0. By 2008 the slates had to come off because the gables were buckling under their own weight. By 2010 the house was a ruin: a clock face had fallen from the tower, three-quarters of the battlement statues were on the ground, scaffolding held a crack in the west wing together. The action group had been raising money for fifteen years and the BBC had filmed it twice for its Restoration programmes, and still Bank Hall stood in the soft Lancashire mud at Bretherton, a Jacobean mansion descending toward the kind of dignified rubble that English heritage law tries hard to prevent. The story of how it was saved is a story of stubborn local volunteers, snowdrops, a £1.69 million Heritage Lottery grant, and a developer called Next Big Thing who finally finished what others had started.

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Image: Bankhall | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/c/bank-hall-wp/gctc-bank-hall-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Bank Hall: Banastres, Beheading, and Brick https://qualla.com/bank-hall/ Photo credit Bankhallbretherton (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The Banastres came over with the Normans. Robert de Banastre built a motte-and-bailey castle at Prestatyn around 1164 and fled to Cheshire and Lancashire in 1167 after Owain Gwynedd, Prince of North Wales, destroyed the castle. In 1315 Sir Adam Banastre led the Banastre Rebellion...

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Image: Bankhallbretherton (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/c/bank-hall-wp/gctc-bank-hall-banastres-beheading-and-brick.mp3 0:06 2 full Bank Hall: The Last Resident Owner https://qualla.com/bank-hall/ Photo credit Bankhallbretherton (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. George Anthony Legh Keck moved to Bank Hall from Leicestershire when he inherited in the 1820s. He was the last person who actually lived in the house, and he commissioned the Kendal architect George Webster to enlarge it in 1832-33. Legh Keck was a collector of stuffed animals, ...

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Image: Bankhallbretherton (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/c/bank-hall-wp/gctc-bank-hall-the-last-resident-owner.mp3 0:06 3 full Bank Hall: The Action Group https://qualla.com/bank-hall/ Photo credit Bankhallbretherton (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. What saved Bank Hall was not the lottery and not the developers. It was the volunteers. The Bank Hall Action Group, formed in 1995 and renamed Friends of Bank Hall in 2012, started by raising public awareness, clearing the overgrown grounds, holding open days. In 2003 they got th...

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Image: Bankhallbretherton (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/c/bank-hall-wp/gctc-bank-hall-the-action-group.mp3 0:06 4 full Bank Hall: The Garden That Sold Itself https://qualla.com/bank-hall/ Photo credit Bankhallbretherton (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Eighteen acres of gardens, parkland, and arboretum surround the house. George Anthony Legh Keck planted most of it: coast redwoods, a dawn redwood, a Lebanon cedar, an atlas cedar, swamp cypress, lime, magnolia. The tallest tree is a wellingtonia that towers over the woodland. Th...

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Image: Bankhallbretherton (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/c/bank-hall-wp/gctc-bank-hall-the-garden-that-sold-itself.mp3 0:06 5 full Bank Hall: How the Restoration Finished https://qualla.com/bank-hall/ Photo credit Bankhallbretherton (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. The Heritage Lottery Fund put up £1.69 million in February 2012. The developer Next Big Thing took on the conversion in July 2017 with the aim of finishing in eighteen months. The pandemic delayed everything. The house's exterior was finally restored in 2020, the interiors and im...

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Image: Bankhallbretherton (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/t/c/bank-hall-wp/gctc-bank-hall-how-the-restoration-finished.mp3 0:06 6 full