Agecroft Hall will be the site of our welcome party and social events. It is a Tudor manor house and estate located in Richmond, Virginia. The manor house was built in the late 15th century, and was originally located in the Irwell Valley, at Agecroft, Pendlebury, then in the county of Lancashire, England.

During an era when many wealthy American families were building extensive country estates emulating those they had seen in Europe, Mr. Thomas C Williams, whose business interests included tobacco, banking and shipping wished to build a true English manor house on his 23-acre estate. The manor house was dismantled, crated, transported across the Atlantic, and reconstructed.

The hall was one of three manor houses owned by the Prestwich family from 1292 when Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, granted land on the banks of the River Erwell in Lancashire, to Adam de Prestwich. In 1350, Johanna de Tetlow, daughter of Alice de Prestwich and Jordan de Tetlow, married Richard de Langley of Middleton, after the deaths of her parents and brothers – possibly from the plague. The name “Agecroft”, meaning “field of wild celery” was adopted circa 1376, the old name of Pendlebury being dropped for the manor but not for the village.