Agecroft Hall is a Tudor manor house and estate located at 4305 Sulgrave Road on the James River in the Windsor Farms neighborhood of Richmond, Virginia, United States. The manor house was built in the late 15th century and was initially located in the Irwell Valley at Agecroft, Pendlebury, then in the historic county of Lancashire, England. Still, by the 20th century, it was unoccupied and in disrepair. Mr. Thomas C. Williams, Jr. of Richmond, Virginia, a wealthy entrepreneur, purchased Agecroft Hall upon the advice of his architect, Henry G. Morse. During the Country Place Era, when many wealthy American families built extensive country estates emulating those they had seen in Europe, Mr. Williams, whose business interests included tobacco, banking, and shipping, wished to build a true English manor house on his 23-acre estate overlooking the James River. The manor house was dismantled, crated, transported across the Atlantic, and reconstructed in Richmond’s Windsor Farms neighborhood – then a fashionable new neighborhood being developed by Mr. Williams on the Williams family farm site, which had long been known as ‘Windsor.’
The architect, Mr. Morse, was retained to oversee the reconstruction. The intention was not to replicate Agecroft as it had stood in Lancashire but to create a functional and comfortable mansion reminiscent of its English predecessor. The original floor plan was abandoned, and many 20th-century conveniences were included. Reconstruction took two years and cost approximately $250,000, a considerable sum. The project was completed in the spring of 1928. Bed Bug Exterminator Richmond
History
The hall was one of three manor houses owned by the Prestwich family from 1292 when Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, granted land on the banks of the River Irwell in Lancashire to Adam de Prestwich. In 1350, Johanna de Tetlow, daughter of Alice de Prestwich and Jordan de Tetlow, married Richard de Langley of Middleton after the deaths of her parents and brothers – possibly from the plague. The name “Agecroft,” meaning “field of wild celery” (from ache and croft), was adopted circa 1376, the old name of Pendlebury being dropped for the manor but not for the village. Subsequently, the Langleys lived at Agecroft Hall until 1561, when the male line failed. The Langleys were a powerful local family with major land holdings for several centuries.
Babes in the Wood
Cyril Bracegidle, in his book Dark River: Irwell, asserts that legend has it that an incident inspired the tale of the Babes in the Wood at the Hall during the reign of Edward III. On the morning of the Feast of the Ascension (the 40th Day after Easter Sunday) in 1374, young Roger Langley and his sister escaped from the villainous Robert de Holland and his men and hid in the forest which covered the slopes of the Irwell Valley, cared for by loyal retainers, until their guardian, John of Gaunt, the first Duke of Lancaster, rescued them. However, other sources attribute the story to a Wayland Wood, Norfolk incident.
Address: 4305 Sulgrave Rd, Richmond, VA
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