Hulton Park's past explored in archaeological dig

An archaeological dig has been taking place at Hulton Park, the estate which once belonged a wealthy Bolton family - and was the inspiration for the hit TV drama Downton Abbey.

Hulton Hall used to stand on the park grounds until it was demolished in the 1950s.

The estate has links to significant events in the UK’s history, from William Hulton signing the order which led to the Peterloo Massacre in 1819.

The park is now owned by property developer Peel L&P, who have been proposing their £200m Ryder Cup golf course plan for the park.

The former site of Hulton Hall, with a curved bay window extension visible in this image

Richard Knight, Director of Planning and Strategy at Peel L&P, said: “We’ve got some exciting plans for Hulton Park and as part of that we’re trying to understand the history and the heritage of the site. We’ve instructed the University of Salford to do an archaeological dig and we’ve opened that up to the community.

“The two-fold intention there, firstly we need to understand what’s here, we want to record what’s here, see understand the significance of the site, and hopefully find some really interesting things, there’s been a few things found already.

“Secondly, to get people involved and engage the community, we’ve had a lot of interest in this.”

He hinted at future plans for the park, saying:“We’re going to have more events in the park after the success of this one, so we’ll be making announcements on certain things very soon and hope that people will get involved and come and enjoy coming into the park and doing some different activities.”

An old photo of Hulton Hall from before its demolition

Charlotte McCarthy, Peel Group Archivist, said:“Hulton Park has a really interesting heritage, so Peel are only the second owners of Hulton Park, Peel acquired the estate in 2010, but previously to that it had been in the same family’s hands for 700 years.

“It’s a really fantastic, fascinating estate, what we’re doing down here today is we are actually uncovering the foundations of the family’s house, Hulton Hall as it was called. We’ve asked members of the community to come down and to work with Salford archaeology on a community dig.

“It has been an absolutely fantastic two weeks, I took part in the dig myself. Just absolutely amazing, unfortunately we didn’t find anything very exciting.

“The people in the trench next to us got the most amazing 1930s coin and we were so jealous.

Greater Manchester County Archaeologist, Ian Miller, showing some amazing pottery fragments from the dig

“But the finds have been absolutely extraordinary, the archaeologists were showing us a bit of the pottery they found earlier, which is fantastic, bottoms of champagne bottles so you could see that the Hulton family were living the good life.”

Charlotte added: “On the 3rd and 4th of September we’re going to have the Hulton Happenings and it’s going to be free with activities for children and a heritage walk around the estate.”

The dig was initially started by archaeologists, but was then opened up to the public.

Dr Colin Elder from Salford Archaeology, who was the dig site manager at Hulton Park, said:

“As an archaeologist you always like to dig something new and this is my first 17th century manor house, so personally it’s quite exciting to see this open up.

“But I think a bigger part of this project in particular is that it’s been a community dig, so we’ve had a wide variety of members of the community come up and assist us with that, of all ages, most of whom had never been on an archaeological site before.

Director of Planning and Strategy Richard Knight said the dig has been set up to "engage the community"

“Which has been really exciting, because we get to share this experience with them, stuff we do day in and out, and it’s really, I’ve seen the volunteers come together as a community and get to experience their history in a way that archaeology kind of does.”

Ian Miller, County Archaeologist at Greater Manchester Archaeological Advisory Service, said:“My principal role is to provide specialist advice to the ten district planning authorities in Greater Manchester, in planning matters and any sort of archaeological situations that come into planning.

“My interest here, we’re not really in planning, but I’m just really interested in what’s coming out because this is a fantastic opportunity to look at a really important site that we’ve never had the opportunity to look at before.”

Ian spoke on the importance of the site, saying: “Looking at the documentary material that we have, we know it’s been occupied since at least the medieval period, that in itself in the context of Greater Manchester is quite rare, it’s not something we get to explore very often, and Hulton Park particularly is really important in that it’s an unaltered landscape to a great extent.”

Items and fragments found at the site include pieces of fine pottery, some from as early as the 17th century, bottoms of champagne and wine bottles, smoking pipes and much more.