Sharston Hall was a manor house built in Sharston, an area of Wythenshawe, Manchester, England, in 1701. [1] A three-storey building with Victorian additions, [2] it was purchased by Thomas Worthington, an early umbrella tycoon, and occupied by the Worthington family until 1856, when the last male heir died. [1] 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. [3] [a] Manchester Corporation purchased the hall in 1926. [5] During the Second World War it was leased by the local watch committee for use by the police, civil defence and fire services. [6]
From 1941 until 1957 Sharston Hall's coach house served as Wythenshawe's fire station. [7] 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. [8]
By the late 1960s the hall was in a poor state of repair and was boarded up. [6] Sharston Hall was demolished in 1986, replaced by offices in a sympathetic 18th-century style [2] – or what Pevsner's architectural guide calls a parody of it [9] – and houses. [2]