Heaton Hall, Park and Orangery

Heaton Hall, Park and Orangery

Heaton Park
The Farm Centre
Manchester
Greater Manchester
M25 2SW

Tel: 0161 773 1085
Fax: 0161 798 0107
E-Mail: heatonpark@manchester.gov.uk

Web: Heaton Hall, Park and Orangery

About Heaton Hall, Park and Orangery

Heaton Park is a huge family park open 365 days and is free to enter, although a small car parking charge is made at weekends. There are two cafes, a farm centre, great children's play areas, tram museum and boating lake. Heaton Park hosts many events throughout the year, from open-air theatre, free children's activities and major concerts.
The house that had stood on the site of the present Heaton Hall since the late 17th century would have been very old fashioned when its 21 year old owner Sir Thomas Egerton (later 1st Earl of Wilton) married Eleanor Assheton of Middleton in 1769. Three years later Sir Thomas commissioned a fashionable architect named James Wyatt to design a new home for his young family.
Earlier in 1772 Wyatt had attracted the attention of the aristocracy with his design for the Pantheon in Oxford Street, a rendezvous for assemblies, balls and masquerades described by Gibbon as the wonder of the eighteenth century and of the British Empire'.
Sir Thomas' account books of the time show that Wyatt's neo-classical masterpiece was built in phases. The central block, and the west wing containing the kitchen and below stairs activities were completed by 1778. Work on the east wing with the Library and Music Room went on until 1789, the year that Samuel