Great Barr Hall is an 18th-century mansion situated in the Great Barr district of Pheasey, in Walsall, West Midlands, England. In about 1777, Joseph Scott replaced an old house on the site with a two-storey, nine-bay mansion in the Strawberry Hill Gothic Revival style. The house was much altered and extended about 1840, and in 1863, an adjacent chapel was erected, likely by architect George Gilbert Scott.
Financial problems led the Scott family to lease out the hall from about 1788 to Samuel Galton. For some years, the hall became a venue for meetings of the Lunar Society, and it is said to be the 'favourite place of meeting' of this body. In 1791, Sir Francis Scott inherited the manor and returned to live in the house until his death in 1863. His widow, Mildred, lived in the hall until 1909.
In 1911, the estate was sold and became The Great Barr Park Colony for 'mental defectives' in 1918, eventually becoming St Margaret's Mental Hospital in 1948. The hospital began to close in phases from the late 1980s, with the male department closing in 1992 and the female department in 1997. While the grounds became a nature reserve in the 1980s, the hall itself was abandoned in 1978.
Today, Great Barr Hall is a Grade II listed building and is in a very poor state of repair. It is currently on the Buildings at Risk Register. Despite its derelict state, the hall and chapel were used in filming the third episode of season 7 of Dalziel and Pascoe in 2002.
Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons
Written by Nicolo Ciampini
Discuss this with the author and others
No comments yet. Be the first to start the conversation.