Survey to investigate remains of lost Burnley manor house (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Survey to investigate remains of lost Burnley manor house

7:50pm Saturday 16th June 2012 in News

AN underground survey could be conducted to show how one of Burnley’s most historic buildings would have looked for Edward II.

The embattled monarch held court at the ancient Manor House in Ightenhill in 1323, shortly after his victory at the Battle of Boroughbridge.

Today only a few impressions are left in the soil in a field behind Hill Farm, to show where the landmark, construced in the 12th or 13th century, once stood.

But now Ightenhill Parish Council is set to submit a £20,000 bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund to bring the building back to life.

Plans have been drawn up to conduct a resistivity test on the footprint of the old manor house, which had been pulled down by the end of the 19th century.

Using technology familiar to many through TV’s Time Team programme, electro-magnetic currents will be used to map out the dimensions of the property.

Roger Frost, the parish council’s clerk, said: “We will get an image of what the manor house would have looked like.

“We have an idea of its appearance because people wrote about it in the past. But this will give us a clearer idea.”

Images of the old manor house will be drawn together as part of a storyboard, which will detail the building’s links to Burnley’s history.

Perhaps its most illustrious occupant was Henry de Lacey, who drew up the charter for a market in Burnley in 1294.

Following its heyday it fell into decline, with many of its manorial functions being transferred to Higham.

But it passed into the hands of the Towneley family in 1524, and later Richard Shuttleworth, of Gawthorpe Hall.

*Edward II was deposed at the end of 1326 by forces led by his wife Isabella, who installed her son, Edward III, on the throne.