Ask people in Padiham where the castle is — and they’ll point to the head of Arbory Drive near the cricket field.

Of course, it isn’t really a castle at all, but the gatehouse or the lodge to the Starkie’s Huntroyde Hall, although it does have double towers, castellated tops and Norman arched windows.

Popular opinion places a date on it to around 1790 and today you can still see the gated access road to Huntroyde beyond.

It has been said that at one time you could go from Padiham to Lancaster without ever leaving Starkie land.

During the First World War, parts of Huntroyde were used as a military hospital with Mrs Starkie funding three wards to care for the British, Belgian and Canadian soldiers injured in France.

Guy Piers Starkie inherited Huntroyde Hall from his uncle Edmund in 1955 —but the family link with the ancient hall was severed in 1983 when he sold the hall, but not the land to the Duerden family.

In the 1850s, the Arbory gatehouse was home to John Speak, an agricultural labourer working for the state and his wife Alice. They were both local folk, John was born at Simonstone around 1819, while his wife was born at Read in 1820. The pair were wed at St Leonard’s Church, Padiham, in 1842.

The 1861 census reveals that Alice is widowed and she describes herself as the ‘gatehouse keeper’ the only mention found by local historians.

Remarkably, Alice reared four children within the damp and cramped confines of Arbory Lodge — Nancy, Alice, Mary and Amos.

By the time Alice was 50 years old she was reduced to taking in laundry, Amos the son contributed somewhat to the family income by working as a cotton warehouseman, and the daughter Mary worked as a general servant.

Mary went on to get married at St Leonard’s Church in 1876 to Henry Myers a local rope maker in the town and soon after her mother moved into 5, Church Street, with them.

After this the old gatehouse appears to have been simply boarded up by the Huntroyde Estate and left to weather the years for almost seven decades.

Indeed, there is no mention of anyone living at the Arbory Lodge until 1953, when someone named M. Law was listed at the gatehouse and it has been home to several families ever since.