The Beards of Beard Hall

 

extract from The Old Halls, Manors and Families of Derbyshire Vol 1 by Joseph Tilley, published 1892

Along the north bank of the Goyt, from Kinderscout to Mellor, is the tract of land once designated Bowden Middlecale.  Within this tract there once stood a solitary mill, situated in a romantic glen, which did duty for centuries for all the surrounding townships.  There are several mills now (it is the district of mills), and a railway station, too, from whence it is a comfortable stroll to Beard, or Ollerset, or Thornsett, or Scout, or the Mermaids' Pool, or Hayfield, or Long Lee.  Here we are surrounded by those picturesque spots where some of the oldest of the Peak families were located in such remote times. Here, almost within sight of each other, were the homesteads of the Beards, Bradburys, and Needhams. In our stroll we noticed a shopkeeper (a chemist, druggist, and colourman), named Kinder; we remembered that Hayfield Church was built by the munificence of a Kinder in 1385.  Is it not probable that the colourman may be a descendant of an ancestor whose name is found on several glorious rolls?

The Manor of Beard, says White, was given to John, Earl of Shrewsbury, by Henry VIII. This could not be, for there was no John Talbot who wore the coronet under that monarch; though white is correct in saying it was given to the Talbots, and this brings us face to face with a fact Lysons could have rendered intelligible.  If Henry VIII gave it to the Talbots, how could the Beards, Leghs, and Duncalfs have possessed it and passed it by heiress previous to the Talbots?  The Royal gift would shew it to be Royal demesne, while there is no evidence that the Beards were tenants in Capite.  We have an idea that the tenure of the Beards, and their heirs, was under the Abbey of Basingwerke(a).  These are the kind of facts the compilers will not face.  The senior line of the Beards became extinct about 1400, when the heiress mated with the Leghs (she was the wife of two brothers successively), and the manor was certainly in her dowry.  Beard Hall was assuredly distinct from the manor, for the homestead remained with a junior line of the family until the days of Queen Elizabeth anyway.  The old edifice is delightfully situated about half-a-mile from New Mills, and from its position commands a splendid view of the surrounding country.  The masonry of the remains (for there is only a gable left of the original structure) was evidently the work of William Beard, who was living here in 1570, and whose daughter, Elizabeth (senior co-heiress), married Ralph Ashenhurst.  We do not refer to the foundations, for they are considerably older, nor to a small portion of the interior, which has the appearance of having been former out of a tower with port holes. How an old Peak family gets lost sight of can be instanced by the Beards.  The most careful and accurate of Derbyshire compilers (dear old Lysons) has these sentences:  "The grandfather of the last Beard, of Beard Hall had four sons; the two elder died without male issue, each of them having only a daughter and heir; Alice, daughter of Nicholas, married Blackwell; Alice, daughter of Richard, married Bowden.  William, son of John, the third son, was of Beard Hall, and had three daughters married to Ashenhurst, Holt and Yeaveley.  The Ashenhursts inherited Beard Hall.  Ralph, the fourth son, had four sons, but we know nothing of their posterity."  The descendants of this fourth son are yet among us; yes, living within a short stroll from their ancestral homesteads, but not as lords of a manor, but as vendors of treacle and soap, and other delectable necessities of life.

We had little hope of finding any remains of Beard Hall yet standing, for intelligence had reached us - indeed, we were so told as we were plodding our way from Bugsworth - that it had been entirely rebuilt.  There was more than one pleasure awaiting us, for not only was there the old gable, but a resident within who was a descendant of the historic Staffords, who has been repeatedly asked why he makes no attempt to recover on of the peerages once held by that family, and which is still in abeyance.  The courtesy of Mr. Daniel Stafford and his lady we most gratefully acknowledge, while their willingness to give information makes us their debtor, to which we would add, that if our ideas could have been as readily grasped by some people who are tenants of other old edifices as by this lady and gentleman, we should have gathered more facts by the way than we have. The Legs who held the Manor of Beard were offshoots of the great Cheshire house who had branches at Adlington, Bothomes, Bruche, Lyme and Ridge.  The name they held was not really their own, paternally, for they were descendants of the  Venables, Baron Kinderton, one of whom, in the reign of Henry III, married the heiress of the Leghs, and adopted her name.  Their son espoused Ellen de Corona and acquired Adlington, thus the two quarterings of their shield become intelligible.  The pedigrees of Cheshire families given by Earwaker tells us of many unions with Peak families, of which we gather but little from our own compilers. The wife of the last Beard of Beard Hall was a daughter of the Davenports of Henbury.

The Ashenhursts were a Staffordshire house of remote antiquity. John, the grandson of the Beard heiress, who was born here, became that famous, or infamous Parliamentary Colonel during the Civil War, whose compound treachery is known to historical students. This fact alone would have attracted many an individual to Beard. The father of the Colonel was a J. P., who donned the profession of a clergyman occasionally, for the entry is on record that he married seventeen couples of Chapel-en-le-Frith lads and lasses one morning.  Is it not singular that this old building, after having sheltered the Beards and the Ashenhursts, should now be the dwelling of a gentleman whose ancestor not only fought at Hastings, and whose name if on the Roll of Battle Abbey, but who was cousin to the man to whom the victory gave the throne of England?  Is it not singular, too, that the Halls of Beard, Shalcross, Ollerset and Mellor (all comparatively within a stone's throw of each other), all seeming with historic associations, all within about twenty miles from Bakewell, should be so little known even to the curious.

 (a)  Basingwerke Abbey near Holywell, Flintshire was abandoned in 1536. They formerly held considerable lands in Derbyshire