Sharston Hall

{{Short description|Former English manor house}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

Sharston Hall was a manor house built in Sharston, an area of Wythenshawe, Manchester, England, in 1701.{{r|HistoryHeritage}} A three-storey building with Victorian additions,{{sfnp|Deakin|1989|p=11}} it was purchased by Thomas Worthington, an early umbrella tycoon, and occupied by the Worthington family until 1856, when the last male heir died.{{r|HistoryHeritage}} The hall was occupied by the Henriques family in the 1920s, but following their death in a motor accident in 1932 the house was converted into flats.{{sfnp|Deakin|1983|p=37}}{{efn|David Q. Henriques was a Manchester stockbroker and magistrate. He apparently lost control of the car he was driving in Hazel Grove and was involved in a head-on collision with a tram travelling in the opposite direction. Both Henriques and his wife died on their way to Stockport Infirmary.{{r|HullDailyNews}}}} Manchester Corporation purchased the hall in 1926.{{sfnp|Cooper|2007|p=158}} During the Second World War it was leased by the local watch committee for use by the police, civil defence and fire services.{{sfnp|Deakin|1989|p=115}}

From 1941 until 1957 Sharston Hall's coach house served as Wythenshawe's fire station.{{sfnp|Deakin|1989|p=121}} In 1948 the Sharston Community Association, founded that same year, was allocated part of the hall for use as a community centre. Two years later the association took over the entire house, expanding in 1957 to also occupy the coach house then recently vacated by the fire service.{{sfnp|Deakin|1989|p=132}}

By the late 1960s the hall was in a poor state of repair and was boarded up.{{sfnp|Deakin|1989|p=115}} Sharston Hall was demolished in 1986, replaced by offices in a sympathetic 18th-century style{{sfnp|Deakin|1989|p=11}} – or what Pevsner's architectural guide calls a parody of it{{sfnp|Hartwell|Hyde|Pevsner|2004|p=505}} – and houses.{{sfnp|Deakin|1989|p=11}}

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