Smithills Hall

The name comes from the Old English smeþe, meaning smooth, and hyll, a hill; it was recorded as Smythell in 1322. The documented history of the hall begins in 1335, when William Radcliffe acquired the manor from the Hultons, who held it from the Knights Hospitaller. On Radcliffe's death in 1369 it passed to his son Sir Ralph Radcliffe, High Sheriff of Lancashire from 1384 to 1387 and twice MP for Lancashire. The Radcliffes held Smithills until 1485, when the male line failed and the hall passed to the Bartons, wealthy sheep farmers who lived there for nearly two hundred years.

In 1659 the estate passed by marriage to the Belasyse family; the Byroms of Manchester bought the manor in 1722 and kept it until 1801, when it was acquired by the Ainsworths, who had made their fortune from bleachworks at Barrow Bridge. Around 1875 Richard Henry Ainsworth commissioned the architect George Devey to extend and modernise the hall. In 1896 the family name became attached to a very public quarrel: 12,000 people took part in a mass trespass at Winter Hill after Colonel Henry Ainsworth closed Coal Pit Road, a vital route from Halliwell towards Rivington Moor, for his exclusive shooting. The crowd broke down the gate. The protest is commemorated by a stone on Coalpit Road, it proved a forerunner of the Kinder Scout mass trespass, and by 1996 the road had been declared a public right of way.

The Ainsworths sold the hall to Bolton Corporation in 1938, and parts of it served as a residential home and day centre until the 1990s. The oldest rooms opened as a museum in 1963, the museum expanded into some of the Victorian extensions in the 1990s, the west wing was restored by the council in 1999, and the Devey Room was fully refurbished in 2018. Among earlier visitors was Nathaniel Hawthorne, who came to Smithills and described it while serving as United States consul in Liverpool in 1855.

Beyond the footprint tradition, the written record at Smithills is quieter than the hall's reputation might suggest: the legend of the bleeding mark and the date attached to it have come down to us, but no catalogue of named witnesses or described encounters. The hall has featured in television programmes with a paranormal theme, including an episode of Most Haunted in 2005 and Great British Ghosts in 2012 — and, in a sunnier register, Mr Bloom: Here and There in 2015.

Smithills Hall is owned by Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council and open to the public as a museum, with the medieval great hall, the restored west wing and the Devey Room among the highlights. Since 2017 the ground floor has also housed Poppins at Smithills, a Mary Poppins themed tea room, and the surrounding 120 acres of gardens and pleasure grounds are well worth an hour on foot — formal planting close to the house, then a steep wooded valley and lake to the north where the parkland meets the moor.

Organised public ghost hunts are run at the hall by event companies, so if you would rather see the oldest rooms after dark than in daylight, it is worth checking which evenings are available and booking ahead. Bear in mind the setting: the hall stands at 500 feet on the edge of the West Pennine Moors, three miles north-west of Bolton town centre, so sensible footwear and a warm coat will serve you well, day or night.