page_title: Little Moreton Hall
section_title: Ground floor
hierarchical_section_title: Little Moreton Hall / House / Ground floor
caption_attribution_description: English: Paintings on the wall of the parlour, Little Moreton Hall
context_page_description: Little Moreton Hall, also known as Old Moreton Hall, is a moated half-timbered manor house 4.5 miles southwest of Congleton in Cheshire, England. The earliest parts of the house were built for the prosperous Cheshire landowner William Moreton in about 1504–08, and the remainder was constructed in stages by successive generations of the family until about 1610. The building is highly irregular, with three asymmetrical ranges forming a small, rectangular cobbled courtyard. A National Trust guidebook describes Little Moreton Hall as being "lifted straight from a fairy story, a gingerbread house". The house's top-heavy appearance, "like a stranded Noah's Ark", is due to the Long Gallery that runs the length of the south range's upper floor.
  The house remained in the possession of the Moreton family for almost 450 years, until ownership was transferred to the National Trust in 1938. Little Moreton Hall and its sandstone bridge across the moat are recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building, and the ground on which Little Moreton Hall stands is protected as a Scheduled Monument.
context_section_description: The Great Hall at the centre of the north range is entered through a porch and screens passage, a feature common in houses of the period, designed to protect the occupants from draughts. As the screens are now missing, they may have been free-standing like those at Rufford Old Hall. The porch is decorated with elaborate carvings. The Great Hall's roof is supported by arch-braced trusses, which are decorated with carved motifs including dragons. The floor, now flagged, would probably originally have been rush-covered earth, with a central hearth. The gabled bay window overlooking the courtyard was added in 1559. The original service wing to the west of the Great Hall, behind the screens passage, was rebuilt in 1546, and housed a kitchen, buttery and pantry. A hidden shaft was discovered during a 19th-century investigation of two secret rooms above the kitchen, connecting them to a tunnel leading to the moat, the entrance to which has since been filled in. The west range now houses the gift shop and restaurant.
  A doorway behind where the family would have sat at the far end of the hall leads to the Parlour, known as the Little Parlour in surviving 17th-century documents. Together with the adjoining Withdrawing Room and the Great Hall, the Parlour is structurally part of the original building. The wooden panelling is a Georgian addition, behind which the original painted panelling was discovered in 1976. The decoration consists of painted imitations of marble and inlay, and Biblical scenes, some of which were painted directly onto the plaster and others on paper that was then pasted to the wall. "Crudely drawn" but nevertheless "elaborate", the paintings tell the story of Susanna and the Elders from the Apocrypha, a "favourite Protestant theme". The Moreton family's wolf head crest and the initials "J.M." suggest a date before John Moreton's death in 1598. Similar painted decoration is found in other Cheshire houses of the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
  A private staircase between the Parlour and the Withdrawing Room leads to the first floor. The Withdrawing Room has 16th-century carved wooden panelling, and a wooden ceiling with moulded coffering, which probably dates from 1559 when the Great Hall ceiling was added. The bay window in this room was also added in 1559, at the same time as the one in the Great Hall. The pair of windows bear the following inscription underneath their gables:
  God is Al in Al Thing: This windous whire made by William Moreton in the yeare of Oure Lorde MDLIX. Richard Dale Carpeder made thies windous by the grac of God. 
  The wolf head crest also appears in the late 16th-century stained glass of the Withdrawing Room. The chimneypiece in this room is decorated with female caryatids and bears the arms of Elizabeth I; its plaster would originally have been painted and gilded, and traces of this still remain.
  William Moreton III used what is today known as the Exhibition Room as a bedroom in the mid-17th century; it is entered through a doorway from the adjoining Withdrawing Room. Following William's death in 1654 his children Ann, Jane and Philip divided the house into three separate living areas. Ann, whose accommodation was in the Prayer Room above, then used the Exhibition Room as a kitchen. The adjoining Chapel, begun in 1508, is accessible by a doorway from the courtyard. The Chapel contains Renaissance-style tempera painting, thought to date from the late 16th century. Subjects include passages from the Bible. The chancel was probably a later addition dating from the mid-16th century. It is separated from the nave by an oak screen and projects eastwards from the main plan of the house, with a much higher ceiling. The stained glass in the east wall of the chancel is a 20th-century addition installed by Charles Abraham, the last private owner of Little Moreton Hall, as a parting gift on his transfer of ownership to the National Trust.
  The Corn Store adjacent to the Chapel may originally have been used as accommodation for a gatekeeper or steward. By the late 17th century it had been converted
caption: A decorated wall in the parlour
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