Bostock Hall, Chester: Account Book

The volume is a cash book, or day book, recording personal, domestic and estate receipts and disbursements.

Bostock in the Northwich hundred of Cheshire was anciently held by the Bostock family. Subsequently it became the property of the Tomkinsons of Manchester. After the death of William Tomkinson of Bostock in 1770, it passed by devise to his cousin, Edward Tomkinson, who afterwards assumed the name of Wetenhall. He sold Bostock in 1792 to the trustees of James France esq. of Liverpool, for his nephew Thomas France esq., who died in 1815. It then passed to the latter's eldest son, James France France, who died in 1869, whereupon Bostock was inherited by his brother and heir, Canon Thomas France-Hayhurst, rector of Davenham. In the late 19th century Bostock Hall was described as a substantial brick-built structure, erected in 1775 by Edward Tomkinson, and subsequently much extended. Source: Ormerod's History of Cheshire (see below).

The manuscript is available for consultation by any accredited reader.

Purchased by the John Rylands Library from Shaw's Bookshop, Manchester, in August 1948.

Description compiled by Jo Humpleby, project archivist.

Catalogued in the Hand-List of the Collection of English Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library, 1937-1951 (English MS 1132).

Cheshire and Chester Archives and Local Studies holds the Fletcher of Northwich Collection, which contains material relating to the Bostock Hall Estate (ref.: GB 017 DFN).

See George Ormerod, The history of the county palatine and city of Chester, 2nd edition revised and enlarged by Thomas Helsby, 3 vols (London: G. Routledge, 1882), vol. 3, pp. 253-8.