page_title: Damhouse
section_title: House
hierarchical_section_title: Damhouse / House
caption_attribution_description: English: This is the doorway of Dam House Astley. The inscription over the lintel reads, "Erected by Adam Mort and Margret Mort 1650"
context_page_description: Damhouse or Astley Hall is a Grade II* Listed building in Tyldesley but considered to be in Astley, Greater Manchester, England. It has served as a manor house, sanatorium, and, since restoration in 2000, houses offices, a clinic, nursery and tearooms.
context_section_description: An earlier building on the site was a stone and timber hall close to a large barn and cornmill powered by a water wheel. The house gets its name from the dam on the brook that was built to power the wheel.
  The manor house Adam Mort built, dating from around 1600, is described in his will, He died in 1631. The house had a kitchen, parlour with a parlour chamber over it, bed chamber, little chamber, buttery, dairy, loft and clock loft with a bell. The house may have had a chapel. Outside there were stables, pig sties and a ruined stone and timber barn.  The three-storey building was built of handmade bricks with a timber frame. A timber lintel over an inglenook fireplace has been dated to before 1600.
  Much of this building survives though Mort's grandson altered the front of the building in 1650 as evidenced by a plaque over the door. Considerable additions were made in the 18th and 19th centuries when the two-storey east wing was built for the Froggatts. It contains a large first-floor billiard room with four decorative gothic roof trusses. A single-storey north wing with a two-storey coach house was added before 1845 and a single storey west wing added sometime after 1845 when the house was restored by Sarah and Malcolm Ross.
  The house, built around a quadrangle, open at the south west corner is built of rendered brick with stone details and a slate roof. The three-storey frontage has five unequal bays with stone mullioned windows and crosswing gables. There are canted three-storey bay windows in two of the crosswings. The central three-storey porch bay has a studded oak door with Doric columns, pediment and a fanlight. The frontage is largely as built but the plaque over the door is a 20th-century replacement. The east wing dating from the early 19th century is of rendered brick and has four-bays which included a chapel on the first floor. The north and west extensions are built of brick.
  Restoration in 1999-2000 uncovered a "short" long gallery in the attic, 64 feet in length. It had been sub-divided and is the only known example in North West England.
caption: Doorway with Ionic columns, pediment and fanlight
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