The battle to save Manchester’s mysterious, 'unique', and oldest building from ‘unscrupulous developers’

Manchester’s oldest building is up for sale — and now a group of amateur historians are rallying to ‘save’ Wythenshawe’s ‘unique’ 700-year-old Hall.

Baguley Hall was put up for sale by Historic England in May, on the condition that it ‘requires that the public is able to access the building at least occasionally’ and the new buyer ‘restores and operates the building in a sympathetic way’. Now, the Friends of Baguley Hall group has formed a committee to ‘save it from unscrupulous developers’, according to chair Mathew Hopkins, 57.

That’s because there’s more than meets the eye to this 1320-built Hall, which was a working farm until the 1930s, when much of Wythenshawe started to be built. Behind the chain link fencing and warning signs to keep out on Hall Lane lies a ‘nationally and internationally important’ building.

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That’s according to chartered building surveyor and committee member Matthew Williams. The 42-year-old from Chorlton added: “It’s not just a nice building. It’s technically a unique building with the timber frame system.

“If you go inside and look how its structured and how the timber frame is put together, it’s nationally and internationally important .It’s a plank construction rather than a box construction. These are bigger sections and the pattern is different to a normal timber frame mediaeval building. That’s why it’s grade-I listed.”

Adding to the allure of the building is the fact that there are rumours it might be the last Viking-built structure still standing today, anywhere in the world. But Colin G. Piggott, another committee member who’s researched the Hall extensively, doesn’t buy it.

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