John de Lancaster

Visitation of Rainhill
[https://www.geni.com/documents/view?doc_id=6000000197789862829]

[https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/lancs/vol3/pp368-371]
Bretherton of Rainhill. Per chevron indented sable and argent, in chief two lions passant and in base a cross raguly flory counterchanged.

The second moiety descended from Roger and Agnes de Molyneux to their son Richard; (fn. 14) on the death of the latter's son, Sir John (fn. 15) without surviving issue, it became the right of John de Lancaster, son of that John de Lancaster, who married Margery, one of the daughters of Richard de Molyneux. (fn. 16) But little is known of the Lancaster family, (fn. 17) though they held the manor for four centuries and their pedigrees were recorded at the visitations. (fn. 18) In 1628 Thomas Lancaster, as a convicted recusant, paid double the subsidy; (fn. 19) but though his son John was a Royalist, and as such suffered the confiscation of his property by the Parliament, he did not seem to have been charged with the equally serious offense of recusancy. (fn. 20) Subsequently the estate was recovered. In 1717 John Lancaster and two other members of the family as 'Papists' registered estates here. (fn. 21) Parts of the estate were sold, but the hall descended to the Fleetwood family. (fn. 22) On Miss Fleetwood's death, in 1877, it passed to a cousin, James Beaumont, by whom it was sold to the Marchioness Stapleton-Bretherton, and has since descended with the manor-house. (fn. 23)

Rainhill Hall is now used as a farmhouse and is only reached by a field road. The main building is L-shaped, with north and west wings, but it is clear that it was originally built around a court. The south wing has entirely disappeared, but the south end of the east wing remains in a dismantled state, separated from the rest of the house and used as a lumber room. The west wing is entirely modernized, but the north wing has a front of c. 1600 with mullioned windows and at its east end an upper room with an open timber roof of c. 1350, a good specimen with quadrant wind braces, and valuable on account of the rarity of domestic work of this date. The room was formerly used as a chapel and is lighted by mullioned windows on the east and south, of the early seventeenth-century date. The southeast block is also c. 1600 and has a projecting rectangular bay at its south-east angle, with a stone chimney stack immediately to the north. It has been of two stories with an attic, and, though now neglected and ruinous, was evidently a good specimen of its class in its best days, with large mullioned windows, and no doubt the usual accessories of ornamental glazing and paneling.