Norton Hall

Norton Hall is an English country house situated on Norton Church Road in the suburb of Norton in Sheffield, England. For most of its history it has been a private residence, in its latter history it has been used as a NHS hospital, a private hospital and has now been converted into high quality apartments. It is a Grade II* listed building.

The present Norton Hall dates from 1815 but the Norton estate has great history and can be traced back to pre Conquest days with the estate being mentioned in the last will and testament of the Anglo-Saxon nobleman Wulfric Spott who died c. 1002. Modern historian Barbara A. West states that the present Norton Hall “is probably the third house on the site”. In the 12th century the estate was owned by Robert FitzRanulph, the Lord of Alfreton and Norton who funded the building of the nearby Beauchief Abbey. The FitzRanulph family remained the owners of the Norton estate until 1269 when the failure to produce a male heir meant the estate went into the hands of the Chaworth family who owned the estate for almost two hundred years until their male lineage ran out in 1458.

The house then had a succession of different owners including the Denham, Babbington, Eyre, Blythe and Bullock families. The house at this time seems to have been in the style of the traditional Elizabethan E shape manor house, having a principal front with projections at each end and a recess in the centre. In 1666 the Bullocks had severe monetary problems and the house and estate was sold to Cornelius Clarke who died childless and passed it on to his nephew Robert Offley. The Offleys remained for several generations, with Stephen Offley becoming High Sheriff of Derbyshire in 1716. The female heir Urith Offley married the Sheffield industrialist Samuel Shore Samuel Shore in 1759. At this time Norton Hall was described by the Reverend George Hall in his 1815 book “The History of Chesterfield” as “One of those picturesque old mansions of our country gentry of the high order, of which so few remain. Some portions of it were of very high antiquity.”

...
Wikipedia