For several centuries, there was a family with the surname, who took their surname from the Lancashire village, and had a manor house there. But what happened to them?
Hugh Adlington the elder died on 22nd September 1641 at the grand old age of about 78. He followed in the line of several centuries of the Adlington family of Adlington. He left his estate to his eldest (and by this point only surviving) son, also named Hugh. (We shall refer to him how he is sometimes mentioned in records - as Hugh the younger)
Hugh Adlington the younger was in his late forties when he inherited the estate, and along with his first wife Margaret, they had had at least four children who survived to adulthood. Margaret had died in 1831, and Hugh the younger had remarried to Lucy. They spent most of their time living in London. By the time Hugh the younger came into his inheritance, England was a tumultuous country. Protestants were unhappy about King Charles I's Catholic wife Henrietta Maria, and a new parliament had just been recalled, the first in over 15 years.
Hugh the younger's son and heir was his eldest son John Adlington, who was born in about 1620. John Adlington lived under his father's roof, referred to as Adlington House. It is usually described in sources as a black and white manor house, which was rebuilt in the Elizabethan era.
According to a witness, Edward Doughty, 'shereman' [bailiff, steward] of Adlington, whose words are immortalised in the Lancashire Royalist Composition Papers, in 1644 John Adlington joined the King's Garrison at Chester, two years after the start of the English Civil War. Here he reportedly married. His wife's name is unknown, but they were together long enough to father a legitimate child - a daughter named Eleanor.
John is believed to have been slain with a canon bullet when Chester was beleaguered with the Parliament forces. At some point, John himself was mistaken for the landowner at Adlington, instead of his father, and Hugh the Younger's estate was seized for the 'delinquency' of his son. He spent several years battling to get back his estate, a task continued by his younger son Peter, who inherited after his father's death in 1652.
When Peter died childless in the summer of 1688, there were no more Adlington sons to inherit. Therefore, the Adlington estate, including land, cottages and mills were sold for £1400 to Thomas Clayton. The proceeds of this were to go to his wife Olivia, with £100 or £200 (sources differ) to go to his great-nephew Peter, son of Eleanor Adlington.
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| Drawing of the Siege of Chester - Source |