The Old Hall's greatest claim to fame is that its reputed to be the birthplace of John Blow (1649-1708) the most significant English composer in the generation before Henry Purcell.

Born in 1649, the year of the execution of King Charles 1st, he was young enough to benefit from the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, with the revival of church music. Blow wrote music mourning the death of Queen Mary, a monarch for whom six years earlier he had written coronation music, when, with her Dutch husband William of Orange she had succeeded her Catholic father, King James 2nd.

Blow's works include a quantity of vocal music, sacred and secular, the former including a well known setting of the Lord is my shepherd. For the coronation of King James 2nd in 1685 he wrote the anthem God spake sometimes in visions.

The Old Hall was also home to Dr E G Wake, (mid 19th century historian of Collingham).