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!