5 Go Mad: Rufford

We visited Rufford a few weeks ago. We had heard a lot about Rufford from friends and family and had heard that Rufford Old Hall was a good place to visit for tourists. None of us had ever been here before so we were looking forward to visiting somewhere new.

On the day of our visit we all met at The Concourse in Skelmersdale. We got on the bus to Ormskirk and walked down to the train station. Here we got on the Preston train where it was 2 stops to Rufford. Unfortunately we got our timings wrong and ended up having to wait an hour for the train!

Luckily the train only took 15 minutes. We found Rufford Old Hall not well signposted from the train station but we followed other people from the station. As we got closer to the Old Hall there were more sign posts. It took around 15 – 20 minutes walk in total.

We were really impressed by the Old Hall. We took pictures of the topiaries and bee hives. The land around the hall was really remarkable; there were big gardens and a huge outside chessboard too. We paid £6.50 each to get in to the Old Hall, we looked around but we weren’t allowed to take pictures whilst we were inside. Rufford Old Hall doesn’t look like a tourist spot; it just looks like someone’s home. You can really see how someone lived there once.

Another thing we noticed was the trees in the surrounding gardens, some of these had dates and hearts carved into them as mementos – the oldest date we could find was 1947. It really took us back in time, you can imagine how people so many years ago would have come here, and we imagined how they would be dressed and how different things would have been for them back then.

Rufford Old Hall is part of the National Trust who preserve old sites and buildings for tourists to visit. It is currently listed as a Grade 1 listed building, which means it can’t be demolished or extended without written permission. It was home to the Hesketh family for more than 400 years.

We’d heard a lot about the ‘Legend of the White Lady’ tale before we came to Rufford. The Hall is reportedly haunted by ghosts and even the TV show Most Haunted has been to visit. They say the ghost of Elizabeth Hesketh can be seen at night in the Hall, and also another ghost can be seen hovering over the canal opposite, but we didn’t stay around long enough to see! The Old Hall is really eerie. It’s an old building that dates back to the 15^th century so you can understand why we thought it was a bit creepy!

We visited St. Mary’s Marina whilst we were in Rufford which was lovely. The Marina opened in 2006 on the Leeds Liverpool Canal. We saw loads of different boats there. There were facilities for the boaters and even a post office on the site. There’s also a workshop there where people can store their boats when they’re not on the canal.

We headed on back to the town to get the train home. We went into a café next door to the train station for ice cream and chocolate cake. We got on the train back to Ormskirk and made our way back to Skelmersdale.