WHILE many people have links with Mere Hall because they were married there or attended the nursery, Vera Cryer has a very different reason for feeling nostalgic about the building.

That is because Vera’s family lived there in the early 20th century.

Last week we told how Vera visited Mere Hall some years ago to take a look round and learn more about the building where her grandparents brought up their family.

It was a fascinating visit for Vera who took a walk through the many grand rooms where her mother had played as a child.

A member of staff took her around the building and then outside to look at the grand entrance which became so popular with wedding parties — especially for the photographs.

“When I mentioned that my grandmother sold homemade sweets and drinks to the people visiting the park, through a window, he took me to the other side of the house and there it was — a little window, now bricked up.

“It was overlooking the path to the park where the Edwardian public took a stroll around the magnificent, manicured gardens of that era,” she says.

Vera spoke to the member of staff about her mother’s description of the beautiful floral displays, perfect lawns and gravelled paths “kept immaculate by an army of gardeners” in Thomasson Park and he told how it would have been lovely to see the park restored “to at least some of its former glory” while pointing to his favourite spot which had been “the sunken garden” but then became a grassed over hole in the ground.

On each gatepost leading to the hall there are inscriptions and carvings, explains Vera.

Both bear a carved image of the original owner Benjamin Alfred Dobson and on the left post are the words Thomasson Park 1890, Mere Hall Library and Museum with the Bolton Coat of Arms on the other.