Ayscoughfee Hall

Ayscoughfee Hall /ˈæskəˌfiː hɔːl/ is a grade I listed building, located in central Spalding, Lincolnshire, England, and is a landmark on the fen tour.

The house, currently a museum, was built for a local wool merchant, traditionally supposed to be Richard Ailwyn (or Aldwyn) in the fifteenth century. A dendrological study of the roof timbers reveal that the house was built in one phase, with a completion date of the majority of the present building in 1451. Richard Ailwyn's son, Sir Nicholas Ailwyn, a member of the Mercers' Company, became Lord Mayor of London in 1499. The house is substantially unchanged from that period, and would be recognisable to a visitor from the fifteenth century.

The Hall was reputed to have belonged to the Ayscough (Askew, Ainscough) family in the early part of the 16th century - Fee referring to the Knight's Fee or living from the property. Early records name the house as Ayscough Fee Hall. A grant of land at Spalding was made to Sir William Ayscough (1490–1541) by Henry VIII. E. H. Gooch writes about "Ayscoughfee Hall" in his book "The History of Spalding", 1940.

In the seventeenth century, the Hall passed into the Johnson family. The most notable Johnson was the second Maurice Johnson, known as "the Antiquary" (1688–1755), who founded the Spalding Gentlemen's Society (the second oldest antiquarian society still in existence) in 1710. Maurice Johnson was a good friend of the more famous local antiquarian William Stukeley.

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