The South Wing is the earliest part of the house with the courtyard wall dating from the 15th century. In 1812 Peregrine Towneley commissioned Jeffry Wyatt to remodel and modernise the house. Wyatt created these two rooms with their round-headed windows filling the rooms with light. The first room, used as a dining room, had both the green marble fireplace and a system of underfloor heating fitted. The second room contains the fireplace originally supply by the sculptor, Richard Hayward, in 1780. These rooms, designed for entertaining, would be hung with two rows of paintings, and also acted as art galleries, the furniture being arranged around the walls.
For most of the 19th century, they were known as the Blue and Red Drawing Rooms. Around 1900, the Blue Drawing Room became the Green Drawing Room but when the first exhibition opened in 1903, these two rooms became Rooms I and II and the bedrooms in the "Long Gallery" became Rooms III to VI. The rooms were filled with showcases until the 1950s when Hector Thornton started to use the rooms for exhibitions - In order that older people could see the more beautiful and interesting exhibitions, which had always been held in one of the Art Galleries
as he wrote win his annual report for 1954/55.
Since 2002, the Red Drawing Room has been used for civil weddings. Hector Thornton's reason for using the Regency Rooms for exhibitions no longer applied after installation of lifts to the Art Galleries.
The chandelier in the Green Drawing Room was purchased in 1966 and that in the Red Drawing Room in 1967. In 1972, it became the policy to collect Regency furniture and the rooms became known as the Regency Rooms. In 1973 the Towneley Hall Society presented six sets of velvet curtains to decorate the Red Regency Room. In 1985 it was decided to purchase new curtains for that room with the old curtains being altered and hung in the Green Regency Room. This was completed in 1987, financed from the Stocks Massey Bequest and a grant from the North West Museum and Art Gallery Service.