The Rushden Echo and Argus, 13th November, 1953, transcribed by Jim Hollis
Centuries old mansion is now pensioners’ meeting place
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For holiday weeks, as at other times, Rushden Hall is the meeting place of pensioners who find great enjoyment in the freedom of a games room which is their own special haunt. On Wednesday afternoon Mr Walter Smith (75), on the left, and Mr Ernest Barcock (75), pegging the scores, had a keen battle of dominoes, watched with obvious interest by Mr Charlie Charles.
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Every day of every week in Rushden elderly men can be seen hurrying towards Rushden Hall Grounds. They walk alone or in small groups, and their one aim is not to enjoy the fresh air, but to see who can get to the Hall first and claim a window seat.
For all these men are members of the Hall Pensioners’ Parliament and every day they meet and play cards, dominoes, skittles and darts in the centuries-old mansion.
The card and domino players’ headquarters are in a large front room of the house, and the window seat is always popular. There some of the town’s veterans spend their mornings and afternoons talking and playing table games.
In another part of the building, down winding corridors, through oak panelled rooms and even a court-yard, another group of 10 or 15 men spend their time playing the more strenuous games of skittles and darts.
The room was once a kitchen, but now the old wide fireplace has been blocked up and a stove takes its place. Round this the members gather and talk of days gone by when the Hall was considered one of the finest houses in the district.
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Picking up a hand of cards at the Rushden Hall games room on Wednesday, Mr Tom Burfield seemed more than satisfied, and his veteran friend, Mr Harry Frost, evidently saw the point when invited to inspect.
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The stone-flagged floors echo now with the tramp of men’s feet as they get ready to take their throw at the skittles or darts board, but Mr. J. T. Richardson, one of the members, remembers, like the others, the days when the passageways echoed to the feet of aristocracy.
“It used to be a lovely house,” he said, and pointed to a row of bell wires over a doorway – “This was once the maids’ room and those were the bells used to summon them.”
All over the house there are signs of dilapidation, with windows broken, ceilings falling down, but the roof is now restored and all external repair work finished.
Fine place
All the pensioners agree that the Hall is a fine place to meet in, and any man of pensionable age is welcome to join their circle.
Rushden Hall, re-built in Elizabethan times is obscure in origin. It is known that for 200 years, including the Elizabethan era, the Pemberton family lived there.
After the Civil War the Ekins and Fletchers became the local squires, and in the middle of the 19th century the Sartoris family moved in.
Rushden council purchased the estate in 1930 for a public park. During the war years officers of the American Army were in occupation.
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