A Broken Heart in 1599: the Ordsall Hall Ghost, Salford

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated August 25, 2026 · How we verify

Most of the stories told about the Ordsall Hall ghost lead back to one woman: Margaret Radclyffe, whose brother Alexander died in Ireland, and who is said to have died of a broken heart in 1599. Her supposed figure, a White Lady, is reported in the Great Hall or the Star Chamber of this timber-framed manor house in Salford, Greater Manchester. The building around the legend is genuinely remarkable, older than almost anything else in the city, and it costs nothing to walk into.

Ordsall Hall stands in the historic parish of Ordsall, once in Lancashire and now part of the City of Salford. It dates back more than 750 years, though the oldest surviving parts of the present hall were built in the 15th century. It is a Grade I listed building, and entrance is free.

From David de Hulton to Three Centuries of Radclyffes

The first recorded owner of the original hall was David de Hulton, in 1251. The manor of Ordsall came into the possession of the Radclyffe family in about 1335, although it was not until 1354 that Sir John Radclyffe established his right of inheritance. A description from 1351 records a messuage, 120 acres of land, 12 acres of meadow and 12 acres of wood.

Sir John campaigned with Edward III in France during the 1340s and distinguished himself at Caen, Crecy and Calais. His reward was unusual: the King allowed him to bring Flemish weavers back to the Ordsall estate, where he built cottages for them. English weaving was poor at the time, and Manchester textiles had a particularly bad reputation, so the Flemish weavers were set to instructing local weavers. They also began a silk weaving industry, which the sources describe as the foundation for Manchester’s later cotton trade.

The Dutch humanist Erasmus stayed at the hall in 1499 and left an account of the floors that no visitor attraction would put on a leaflet: clay covered with layers of rushes, constantly replenished, the bottom layer remaining for twenty years and harbouring, in his words, spittle, vomit, the urine of dogs and men, the dregs of beer and the remains of fish.

The Great Hall of 1512 and the Chimney That Was Never Built

The original cruck hall was replaced by the present Great Hall in 1512, after Sir Alexander Radclyffe was appointed High Sheriff of Lancashire. It is typical of great halls raised in the north west of England at that period, though one of the largest, and it is unusual in having no wall fireplace at all. The roof structure is elaborate, comparable to that at Rufford Old Hall, and there is a slightly later small room above the large oriel bay.

A modest brick house was added onto the west end in 1639, set at ninety degrees to the timber-framed range and joined to it later. It may have been intended for Sir Alexander’s bailiff, since by then he no longer used the hall as his main residence. The Civil War finished the family financially: Sir Alexander, a Royalist, was imprisoned and suffered hardship, and reduced means forced his heir John Radclyffe to sell the hall to Colonel Samuel Birch in 1662, ending more than 300 years of Radclyffe occupation.

Guy Fawkes, the Star Chamber and the Tunnel Under the Irwell

The hall’s other famous story is not a ghost story but it feeds the atmosphere of the place. William Harrison Ainsworth set his 1842 novel Guy Fawkes here, building on a local tradition that the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 was planned by Fawkes and Robert Catesby in the Star Chamber. In the tale, Fawkes escapes the King’s soldiers through a tunnel running from Ordsall Hall to an inn at the cathedral end of Hanging Bridge, near the northern end of present-day Deansgate.

There is no firm supporting evidence for any of it. What is on record is that the Radclyffes were prominent Roman Catholics and were acquainted with the Catesby family, which is exactly the kind of thin thread on which a durable legend hangs. The road running to the east of the hall is called Guy Fawkes Street.

The tunnels are treated more seriously in the sources than you might expect. Underground passages are believed to have led from the hall into Manchester, and in 1900, after the rediscovery of the Hanging Bridge following two centuries buried, a witness described being shown a door in the cellar of the Hanging Bridge Hotel where arches could be seen and a doorway had been made up. The previous owner was said to have gone into the passage but to have turned back because of bad smells.

Working Men’s Club, Clergy School, Radio Station

After the Radclyffes, the building was passed around and put to work. At the 1666 hearth tax survey it was the largest house in Salford, with 19 hearths. The Oldfield family of Leftwich bought the estate at the end of the 17th century, and in 1704 it went to John Stock, a trustee of Cross Street Chapel, whose family were probably the last owners to live there. In 1756 it was sold to Samuel Hill of Shenstone in Staffordshire, and two years later, on Hill’s death, it passed to his nephew Samuel Egerton of Tatton.

The hall remained occupied until 1871, the last residents being descendants of John Markendale, who had taken on the lease in 1814. By the last quarter of the 19th century it was engulfed, as one account puts it, in mean streets and industry. From 1875 Haworth’s Mill rented it as a working men’s club, converting the Great Hall into a gymnasium and putting in billiards, a skittle alley and a bowling green.

In 1883 the hall was bought by Wilbraham Egerton, 2nd Baron Egerton, and restored between 1896 and 1898 by the Manchester architect Alfred Darbyshire at a cost of £6,000, equivalent to £834,000 in 2024. That work let Lord Egerton found a clergy training school here, with a church dedicated to St Cyprian built in the north forecourt and a new servants’ wing to the south. The school moved to Egerton Hall in 1908. The men’s social club survived until 1940, the hall served as a radio station during the Second World War, and the church and servants’ wing were demolished in the 1960s.

The White Lady of the Great Hall

Salford Corporation bought the hall from the executors of Maurice Egerton, 4th Baron Egerton, in 1959, and after major restoration it opened to the public in April 1972 as a period house and local history museum. It is from this museum era that the haunting reputation is most often repeated.

The story is straightforward and should be labelled for what it is: a tradition, not a documented event. A White Lady is said to appear in the Great Hall or the Star Chamber, and is popularly believed to be Margaret Radclyffe, who died of a broken heart in 1599 following the death in Ireland of her brother Alexander. The sources record that, like many old buildings, Ordsall Hall has stories of hauntings. They do not record verified sightings, named witnesses or investigations, and no honest account of the place can offer more than the legend itself.

Visiting Ordsall Hall Today

The hall you walk into has two clear elements: the timber-framed south range of the 15th century and the brick west range of 1639. It was originally built around a central quadrangle, but the other wings have gone. Substantial alterations came in the mid-18th century under Samuel Egerton, when a floor was inserted into the Great Hall, lath and plaster partitions formed new rooms, and the canopy at the dais end was destroyed, though part of it can still be seen in the north wall. The east wing was probably demolished around the same time, certainly before 1812, the date of the earliest estate map.

In March 2007 the Extraordinary Ordsall Campaign applied to the Heritage Lottery Fund for £5.1 million to regenerate the hall. Supporters raised £1 million by September 2008 and the Fund provided the remaining £4.1 million. Only 40 per cent of the building was open to the public at that point. It closed for refurbishment in early 2009 and reopened on 15 May 2011, and in 2013 the restored building took a Bronze Award in VisitEngland’s Small Visitor Attraction category, from 320 nominations nationally.

Entrance is free. For anyone coming for the ghost, the practical advice is to come for the 1512 roof and the fireless Great Hall as well, because those are the parts of the story that can be checked.

Address: Ordsall, Salford, Greater Manchester

See Ordsall Hall for Yourself

Sources

• A History of the County of Lancaster
• Ordsall Hall's £4.1m Lotto boost
• Ordsall Hall reopening
• historicengland.org.uk
• Measuring Worth – United Kingdom GDP
• Wikipedia: Ordsall Hall