Then & Now
1890-2021 Feniscowles Hall, once one of the great houses of Blackburn. Built in 1808 as the family home for William Feilden, a well known Lancashire industrialist. In its heyday herds of red and fallow deer could be seen surrounding the hall in what was originally created as a deer park.
Feilden made his fortune through cotton and calico and was one of the first industrial barons to fully grasp the concept of the factory system, introducing shift work to maximise production in the mills.Ironically the origin of the fortune that built the hall would eventually bring its demise. The proximity to the river Darwen, a heavily polluted watercourse, would bring an overpowering smell coming from the dark waters. Much of the pollution was caused by the town’s mills, many of which were owned by the Feilden family itself.
The hall was home to three generations of the family before they left to build a new home on the North East Coast away from the industrial heartlands of Lancashire. At the turn of the century the hall’s days were numbered. Various attempts were made to try and find a buyer but none could be found and by 1911 it was effectively abandoned, and the land has barely been been used for anything more than grazing ever since. The hall slowly but surely reduced to a mere shell of it's former grandeur.
