The Hall in the Wood is not only interesting as the place where Samuel Crompton invented the Spinning Mule: it is one of the finest examples among the many ancient Halls of Lancashire, and is singularly varied in its architecture; having been built in two separate and distinct periods, and in each period of entirely different materials. It was one Lawrence Brownelow who built the original half-timbered portion, in 1591, as appears by the initials of himself and his wife Bridget, and the date, B L B 1591 carved on a stone mantel. In 1637 the property was sold to Christopher Norres, woollen-draper, of Bolton, who was succeeded by his son, Alexander, a partisan of King Charles in the Civil War. Norres escaped lightly from the victorious Parliament, with a fine of £15 and the taking of the Covenant and other oaths; and then settled down here, building the stone wing that bears the date 1648. With him, however, ended the Norres reign, for his daughter Alice married a John Starkie, whose descendants resided here until near the middle of the eighteenth century. Their punning heraldic cognisance, six storks for Starkie, may still be seen, done in plaster. [Illustration: HALL-I’-TH’-WOOD.] [Sidenote: _SAMUEL CROMPTON_] It was a neglected and dilapidated old house to which the Cromptons came in 1758. For economical reasons—the window-tax then prevailed—all the unnecessary windows, and some that really were necessary, had been bricked up, rain came through the roof, and rats ran unchecked from room to room. There, in a house a world too large for them, the widowed Mrs. Crompton and her little lad lived upon the proceeds of a small farm and the insignificant gains she made from spinning yarn, by hand, as all yarn then was spun. Samuel helped in the spinning, much, it may be supposed, against his will; and in the drudgery of it his inventive powers were wakened, in the direction of labour-saving. Hargreaves’ spinning-jenny of 1768 and Arkwright’s invention were new when he began to plan, and his machine took the form of an improvement combining the principles of both. He was twenty-one years of age before he began the work, and not until five years were gone had he completed it. The times were not propitious for inventors, bands of infuriated weavers roaming the districts round about, destroying everywhere the spinning-jennies that they imagined were depriving them of work; and Crompton was obliged constantly to take his model to pieces and hide it in the garret roofs of his wind-swept, rat-haunted home. But at length the weavers’ fury spent itself, and then he could experiment without fear of house and model being wrecked. Then, however, arose a newer danger. Crompton, it became gradually known, had a wonderful new machine in the old place, and many were those who sought in some way to surprise the secret of it, among them the crafty Arkwright, inventor and man of business too: an unusual combination of