CHAPTER XI.

THE ANCIENT FAMILY OF WYCHE, OR DE LA WYCHE, OF ALDERLEY, CHESHIRE. {245a}

THE ancient family of Wyche, or De la Wyche, was located at a very early period at Davenham, and afterwards removed to Nether Alderley, in Cheshire, where the members of it possessed an estate, and a mansion called Soss Moss Hall, {245b} which, after being for several generations in the family, were purchased by Sir Edward Stanley, Bart., in 1753, from William Wyche, Esq.; {245c} and are now the property of Sir Edward’s descendant, Lord Stanley of Alderley.

The family appears to have been of great consideration, and of long standing in the county, and one of the family, Sir Peter Wyche, was ambassador to Constantinople, in the reign of Charles I.; {245d} he was first cousin of Richard Wyche, the first of the family who settled at Alderley.

The armorial bearings of the members of the family were, “Azure, a pile ermine; crest, an arm embowed azure, cuffed ermine, holding a trefoil vert.” {246a} In the second volume of Edmonson’s _Heraldry_, the crest is rather differently stated, viz., crest, “a dexter arm embowed, habited gules, turned up or; holding in the hand proper a sprig vert.”

In Lysons’ _Magna Britannia_ the family is named {246b} amongst the Cheshire families still resident in the county, whose descent has been continued in an uninterrupted male line for more than three centuries, and some of them for a much greater length of time. {246c}

In Ormerod’s _Cheshire_ {246d} it is stated that some of the descendants of the family of Wyche were still remaining in the neighbourhood of Soss Moss Hall; that work was published in 1819: and in Lysons’ _Mag. Britannia_, {246e} which was published in 1810, it is stated that the immediate descendant of this ancient family, then (in 1810), rented a farm in the neighbourhood.

It lies in my power to corroborate those statements. William Wyche, a tenant of my father, Richard Brooke, Esq., of Liverpool, resided, when those works were written, and during many years previously, on a farm which belongs to my father, {247} rather more than a mile from Soss Moss Hall; the farm, which is called the Peck Mill Farm, is in Little Warford, in the parish of Rostherne, and there is not any reason to doubt that William Wyche, the tenant, was, as he claimed to be, a lineal descendant of this ancient family. He was an old man, of limited education even for a small farmer, so much so that if he could read, he could not write perfectly. He died about 1821, and the farm was then occupied by his widow, Elizabeth Wyche, for several years, and afterwards by his son, Samuel Wyche, who was in very poor circumstances, and left it in 1839.

On the 28th of April, 1822, and again on 26th of December, 1831, I went to look at Soss Moss Hall; and on the 4th of September, 1848, I happened to be at the Peck Mill Farm, and feeling a desire once more to examine the seat of this ancient family, I walked from the farm to Soss Moss, to amuse myself with another inspection of the old hall, and I found little or no change in it since my first visit. It stands about three hundred yards to the southward of the public road at Soss Moss, in Nether Alderley, and about half that distance from the London and North-Western (formerly the Manchester and Birmingham) Railway, which lies between the road and the mansion. It is two stories high, besides having one or two rooms in the roof, and is of very antique appearance, principally built of timber and plaster, the timber being disposed in squares, in the style sometimes called “pillar and panel.” On the east end is the following inscription, cut in antique letters, in stone, on a projecting stack of chimneys, or range of chimney flues, of great size:—

T. WYCHE 1583

which, no doubt, gives the correct date of the building or rebuilding of the eastern wing. In a room in the western wing, used as a dairy or milk-room, is a stone slab (similar to those used in dairies for placing vessels of milk upon), with the letters cut on it, in similar characters, E W. W W. Of course they relate to other members of the family of Wyche.

On entering the edifice, we come into a room on the ground floor, now used as what is there termed a house-place (partaking in some degree both of the nature of a sitting-room and a kitchen), lighted by a large window, with small panes of glass let into lead, in the cottage style; over it is a border of carved small round ornaments, resembling the roundles of heraldry. This room has evidently been once the large hall, or part of the large hall, or principal room of the mansion; it has much the appearance of having had a portion of the east end cut off to form other rooms, on the ground floor, which are now used for various purposes; at present it looks small and insignificant for such a mansion.

The ceiling of this room is formed of oak planks, quite black, with strong heavy beams of oak of the same colour. It has had a very large projecting chimney, with chimney-corners and a fire-place; but, although the form and appearance remain, it is in part built up, and a common modern grate and fire-place are substituted.

The principal staircase is of oak planks, and its balustrade is of the same wood, with large flat balusters, and a heavy carved hand-rail, all black with age. On the first floor, up the stairs, on the landing, in one of the bed-chambers, and in a cheese-room, the old oak floors remain nearly entire; and the oak floor also partially remains in another room at the eastern end of the building, on the same story; into this room a communication was not long since made from the bed-chamber before mentioned, and in making it the workmen discovered that they were merely reopening an old door-case (which had been long blocked up), with its jambs and lintel.

The room into which the communication was so opened had formerly been let off as part of a distinct dwelling; it lies at the eastern extremity of the mansion, and is now used as a bedchamber. It is remarkable for being the place of discovery of an ancient painting, which it is to be regretted was never seen by any person capable of copying or properly describing it. The old hall is now tenanted by a farmer, who informed me that, in 1847, when he was making a fire-place in it, at the east end, and close to the range of chimney-flues before mentioned, with which the fire-place now communicates, he caused some plaster to be removed, and by that removal exposed to view a painting on stone, representing several men and females, about five or six inches in height. The only description which he could give me of them was, that they appeared to him to have very droll dresses, like long flowing robes, of different colours, with ornaments, which he supposed to represent large buttons; that some of the figures had curiously shaped hats (his description of them conveyed to me the idea of their being something in the style of Spanish hats), and he stated that the painting did not appear to him to represent any Scripture subject. It was covered over again with building materials when the fire-place was completed. It is much to be regretted that the figures were not copied, or at least examined by some person conversant with such subjects; as it is more than probable that they would have afforded a curious and authentic illustration of the dresses of persons of the higher classes, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, about 1583. Some slight indications of a similar painting were once visible, over the fire-place, in a room on the ground floor under the room which will be next described.

There is also, on the first floor, and at the east end of the mansion, another chamber, which once had a door of communication with the room in which the painting was discovered, but of which the door-way, though visible, is now built up, and which is at present entered from the outside of the building, by a modern staircase and door. In this chamber there is a closet, built of stone, and ingeniously built into and forming part of the stack or range of chimney-flues before mentioned. The chamber has a fire-place, on the left of which is the stone closet before mentioned, which was once entered by a thin oaken door, of which the lower half still remains, the upper portion having been sawn off. The closet has been lighted from the outside, by two small apertures in the stone work at the back of it, now built up. {250a}

I could not discover that there were any traces of the old hall having ever been surrounded by a moat, as is the case with some other halls near that part of Cheshire. {250b}

Upon the whole, considering that it belonged to a family of eminence in the county, I was disappointed with the size of Soss Moss Hall, the appearance of the rooms, and the want of the conveniences and comforts which, even three centuries ago, such a family might be reasonably supposed to require; nor does the hall convey to a spectator the idea of a mansion formerly inhabited by a leading family in the county. Besides which, the situation of the hall is bad: it is quite in a flat, the soil is poor and sandy; the public road near it was bad in several places, within my recollection; and, from the appearance of bog-earth in many situations close to it, there cannot be a doubt that, less than three centuries ago, the land about it must have been wet, and almost a swamp; and certainly it was not the situation which we should expect a family of a certain rank in the county, to select for their principal mansion.

The last time that I heard anything of the son of old William Wyche was in September, 1848, when I learnt that he had been for some time an ostler at a small inn at Knutsford, and had since been a labouring gardener at Manchester, or in its vicinity, and was then in very indifferent circumstances, and out of work. Such has been the falling away, and sad reverse, in the fortunes of the old and once high and influential Cheshire family of Wyche, or De la Wyche!