Deeds relating to the manor of Sale in Ashton upon Mersey parish and to the family of Massey of Sale. Deeds also include property in Northenden township and parish; Walton Inferior in Runcorn parish; Hale in Bowdon parish; Godley, Matley and Newton in Mottram in Longdendale parish; and Didsbury in Lancashire. Other documents include a court book of the manor of Sale, 1618-1623 (CWL/944).
George Ormerod suggests that the Massey family of Sale branched off from the Masseys of Dunham Massey about the reign of King John. Richard Massey (who used the variant forms of Massie and Mascie) had seven daughters, and on his death in 1685 the estate appears to have been divided between the eldest, Katherine (who married Robert Malyn of Nottingham, who later became a notable surgeon in Manchester), and the younger daughters: Amy, Ann (who later married Samuel Cliffe of Newark upon Trent) and Barbara. Most of the Massey estate passed to the Malyns’ two daughters and coheirs, Katherine, who married Walter Noble, and Anne, who married Dr Peter Mainwaring.
Ormerod claims that Peter Mainwaring devised the estate to the Legh family, but Earwaker says that the manor of Sale appears to have been purchased by George John Legh towards the end of the eighteenth century, and it remained in the Leghs’ possession for thirty or forty years. The old deeds were handed over at the time of the purchase, but they were retained at High Legh when the estate was sold early in the nineteenth century.