Qualla: Gainsborough Old Hall

Gainsborough Old Hall: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Spooner, CC BY 2.0. Walk through the front door of Gainsborough Old Hall and you walk into the 15th century. The Great Hall's vast open timber roof rises into the same shadows it cast in 1484, when King Richard III sat at a table here as a guest of Sir Thomas Burgh. The kitchens still have the medieval bread ovens and the great fireplaces. The brick tower at the corner of the west wing - a strong, almost defensive tower, faced in fine 15th-century brick - looks the same from the outside as it does in the earliest engravings. Very little house in England survives this completely from this period. Most great medieval manors are gone, or rebuilt past recognition. Gainsborough Old Hall stayed.

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Image: John Spooner | CC BY 2.0

Gainsborough Old Hall: Thomas Burgh's House

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tilman2007, CC BY-SA 4.0. Sir Thomas Burgh built the Old Hall in 1460. The Burghs were rich, flamboyant, and powerful, and the hall was a deliberate piece of architectural advertising as much as a home. Burgh endowed Newark Church, founded the chantry and almshouse at Gainsborough, and built the manor on ...

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Image: Tilman2007 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Gainsborough Old Hall: Henry VIII and Catherine Howard

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tilman2007, CC BY-SA 4.0. Henry came to Gainsborough twice. The first visit, in 1509, was uneventful and probably brief. The second, in 1541, was a different matter. He arrived this time with his fifth wife, Catherine Howard, on the great northern progress that was meant to display royal authority across ...

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Image: Tilman2007 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Gainsborough Old Hall: A Cradle of Dissent

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0. William Hickman and his mother Rose were Puritans, and in the early 17th century they allowed the Old Hall to be used as a meeting place for English Dissenters - men who had separated from the Church of England and who, by the laws of the time, faced excommunication, fines, and w...

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Image: DeFacto | CC BY-SA 4.0

Gainsborough Old Hall: From Friends to English Heritage

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tilman2007, CC BY-SA 4.0. John Wesley preached in the Great Hall on Sir Neville Hickman's invitation in 1759, then again in 1761 and 1764. The Hickman family stayed prominent in Gainsborough into the 18th and 19th centuries, with many of them serving as members of Parliament. By 1949 the building was stru...

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Image: Tilman2007 | CC BY-SA 4.0