4th January 1957
NEW HALL TRAGEDY

The 400-year-old New Hall in Ferrybridge Road, Pontefract, may be demolished on the grounds that it is structurally dangerous and interferes with the development of the farm owned by the Pontefract Industrial Co-operative Society, on who land it stands. No objection to the demolition was raised by the Pontefract Town Council on Wednesday.

The New Hall has a curious history - as curious, perhaps, as the fact that many Pontefract people know it as the Old Hall. Myth and legend have clung persistently to its spectacular ruins and perhaps the most extravagant is that it was a religious house started by the earlier Christian monks, whose conception proved greater than their endurance, so that they left it unfurnished. Yet the source of the misconception can be traced.

Lord George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, became High Steward of the Honour of Pontefract and Constable of the Pontefract Castle in 1549. The dissolution of the monasteries was afoot, and among those to suffer was the Priory of St. John at Pontefract. The Priory was founded about 1090 by the second De Lacy; was a place of considerable wealth and importance; and the burial place of Archbishop Thurstan and the great Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, who, according to some authorities, was canonised sometime after his execution by Edward II.

Lord George is believed to have been one of the many who joined in a surge of building activity arising from Henry VIII’s edict to dismantle man treasures of medieval architecture; and to have built for himself a magnificent mansion with fabric from the dismantled Priory. Fragments of older Gothic buildings are found in the structure, with weathered stone, and woodwork bearing signs of previous mortising. Architecturally the building is an interesting example of the trend from fortification to beautification of residences. Its windows were high, fine and transom’ed, instead of slits; and they had glass panes too. There was more light, air and comfort, and, as even the ruins suffice to show, an air of dignity and charm.

History perhaps more than time has played its part in the reduction of the fine building to the skeleton that now remains. Fortified by Cromwell’s men, it was surrounded by earthworks during the third siege of the Castle, and suffered from Royalist cannon. A five-pound ball taken out of the walls was lodged in the Castle Museum. Then when the Luddite Rioters needed lead for bullets, the roof was stripped in 1812 and the building left to crumble. In 1828 the North Tower fell "with a tremendous crash" and the North Eastern frontage was removed. The stone was used to build the farmhouse, which it is proposed to demolish and replace.

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