windows in between. It was completed in the same year that Parliament introduced the Hearth Tax, and the surviving Hearth Tax Assessment records a house of 18 hearths. When ill-health forced him to relinquish his position as Lord Chief Justice in 1676, Sir Matthew Hale retired to his seat at Alderley where he died on Christmas Day the same year; he was buried in St Kenelm's churchyard. His first wife Anne Moore, daughter of Sir Henry Moore and granddaughter of Sir Francis Moore, had borne him 10 children. He outlived all but the eldest daughter and the youngest son and, as a result, had taken into his care some of his grandchildren (after the death of their parents). It was to these grandchildren that he left his estate, while he bequeathed West End House to his daughter, Mary; the latter property subsequently passed out of the family when it was sold by one of her descendants in the middle of the 18th century, around which time it was substantially rebuilt. For a period of more than one hundred years following the death of Sir Matthew Hale, The Lower House remained the family seat. However, between 1776 and 1780, another Matthew Hale (possibly Sir Matthew Hale's great-grandson) decided to rebuild The Upper House on the lower slopes of nearby Winner Hill (to the east of St Kenelm's Church), after which this became the new family home; consequently, The Lower House may have been abandoned for a while. Lewis Vulliamy's 19th-century redesign for Robert Blagden Hale In 1805, during the period of time when The Upper House was the main Hale family residence, Robert Hale Blagden Hale (1780–1855) inherited the properties in Alderley. In the 1830s, his eldest son, Robert Blagden Hale (1807–1883, brother of the Rt. Rev. Matthew Blagden Hale) chose The Lower House when he set up his own independent establishment. At that time, prevailing Victorian attitudes expanded the number of servants that households were expected to contain, whilst simultaneously endeavouring to ensure that male and female servants were kept separate wherever possible. In 1844 he had a new service wing added to the west side of the house: the wing had a distinctive crow-stepped gable to the garden front and is thought to have been designed by Lewis Vulliamy. Following the death of his father (who had been managing the family estates) on 20 December 1855, Robert Blagden Hale,