HISTORY
Scarisbrick Hall is a large Gothic-style mansion built between 1830 and 1860 and designed by A.W.N. Pugin. The site was home to the Scarisbrick family for over 700 years and today is home to Scarisbrick Hall School.
The Scarisbrick family lived on the West Lancashire site from the early 13th Century until 1946. Before the building we see today it is thought there was another building on the site, where the remains of a moat can be seen in the grounds. In 1595 a timber framed Elizabethan house was built on the same site as the current building, a 150 room mansion built between 1830 and 1860. No longer the Scarisbrick family home, in 1963 the building became the home for Scarisbrick Hall School.
Between 1813-1816 Thomas Scarisbrick rebuilt this original timber framed building in stone, also adding North and West wings in Regency Tudor style. Thomas was succeeded by his brother Charles, following a lengthy legal battle for inheritance of the hall. Charles Scarisbrick wanted to make the house his own and, coming from a Catholic background himself, employed Catholic architect A.W.N Pugin for the task, which he completed between 1837-1845. Scarisbrick had already employed Pugin earlier in 1836 to design a garden seat and fireplace for the Hall. Pugin was a young and enthusiastic architect and only in his mid-twenties when he secured his Scarisbrick Hall as his first major commission.
Pugin remodelled Scarisbrick Hall in the Gothic style, making additions to the medieval Great Hall as well as other rooms in the west wing, as well as designing the main staircase and making embellishments to external decorations. He also added the clock tower, and it is thought Pugin used his designs for this as the basis of his later design for the Big Ben tower at Westminster.
When Charles Scarisbrick died in 1861 his sister Anne inherited the house. Despite being in her seventies, Anne, taking on the name Lady Scarisbrick, had her own ambitions for the estate. She had the East Wing completely rebuilt by Edward W. Pugin, A.W.N. Pugin's son. This included the clock tower, which was replaced by a much larger tower in a more imposing Gothic style, which can still be seen for miles around.