Rufford Old Hall

About

Rufford Old Hall is a National Trust property in Rufford, Lancashire, in north-west England. Built in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries for the Hesketh family, only the great hall survives from the original structure. A brick-built wing in the Jacobean style was added in 1661, at right angles to the great hall, and a third wing was added in the 1820s.

The hall is designated by English Heritage as a Grade I listed building, and the cottage, coach house and stables in the courtyard at the rear of the hall are designated Grade II. Rufford features the only known surviving example of a sixteenth-century carved wooden screen made of bog oak; a collection of rural memorabilia displayed in the stables and throughout the house; and a collection of arms and armour from the fifteenth to the seventeenth-century. The best-known feature of the Victorian gardens is a giant pair of topiary squirrels.