James Hall (historian)
[2] The family were Wesleyan Methodists and worshipped at Clasketgate Chapel, where Hall's father taught at the Sunday school.
He received tuition on the piano from the well-known teacher C. A. Ehrenfechter, and was also taught the organ by the Clasketgate Chapel organist.
[1][4] Although the school was not formally opened until 28 June 1875, he began to teach 40 boys in the Congregational Schoolroom on Church Lane from the beginning of that year.
He moved his growing family to rented accommodation in Broad Street (now Wellington Road), near the station, until the schoolhouse at Willaston was completed in March 1876.
[5] While living at Willaston, he also became a friend of the antiquary John Parsons Earwaker, FSA, the first volume of whose history of East Cheshire appeared in 1877.
With Alfred Withinshaw, he founded the Choral Union of the Wesleyan Methodist choirs of Nantwich, Crewe and Market Drayton in 1884, and organised three music festivals in 1884–85.
[9] In 1885, soon after the publication of Hall's History, Willaston Board School received an "unsatisfactory" rating in its government inspection.
[4] Walter cites contemporary local newspaper articles in support of his father, concluding that his work had been "widely appreciated.
[4] He moved back into Nantwich, initially renting 84 Welsh Row, and decided to open a private senior school for boys.
[10] Financial problems occurred from the outset when Hall fell into dispute with his architect, incurring legal expenses of more than £250 which meant that he remained in debt until 1901.
[14] He is also commemorated by a tablet in the porch of St Mary's Church, erected in 1946, the centenary of his birth, by Percy Corry, also a local historian.
[16] The first history of the town was published anonymously by the Reverend Joseph Partridge, master of the Nantwich Blue Cap Charity School, in 1774.
[17][18] A second history by John Weld Platt, published in 1818, is dismissed by Hall as "little more than an enlarged and better arranged edition of the former work," which fails to acknowledge its source.
The first edition of 350 copies was financed by subscription; it was privately printed by local printer Thomas Johnson, bound by Macmillan and Co. in Manchester and distributed early in 1884.
[7] Nearly four times the length of Platt's work, it covers the period from the Domesday survey of 1086 to the date of publication, and additionally includes the nearby townships of Alvaston (now part of Worleston), Willaston and Woolstanwood.
[20] The book received reviews in national and local periodicals, including one in The Athenaeum on 7 March 1885, which praised the meticulous referencing and described the history as "able, clear and succinct" and its author as "conscientious and careful.
"Providence Improved" by Edward Burghall, the Puritan rector of St Mary's Church, Acton, incorporates a version of part of Malbon's writing.
The book is a collection of leases and rent rolls from 1289 to 1529 relating to Combermere Abbey, which owned a quarter of Nantwich, copied by the final abbot, John Massey, and others.
[29] Hall was granted access to the documents by Robert Wellington Stapleton-Cotton, Viscount Combermere, the abbey's owner.
[16] These and other unpublished notes include research on medieval architecture, misericords in local churches, Acton and Dorfold Hall, and the history of the Delves family of Doddington Castle.
