CHESHIRE |
| Adlington Hall |
Off A523, 5 miles north of Macclesfield |
When George Fredrick Handel stayed at Adlington in 1741
and 1751 he played on England's largest 17th century organ. The organ still stands in the
Great Hall, between two carved oak beams. These timbers, the remains of a Saxon hunting
lodge, support the east end of the hall, which was completed in 1505 with a magnificent
hammerbeam roof. The black and white portions of the house date from 1581, and the
red-brick front from 1757. |
| Arley Hall and Gardens |
Off B5356, 5 miles south-east of Warrington |
This is one of the few large gardens in Britain which
are still maintained as they were before the Second World War - as part of a family home.
The same family has lived at Arley since 1469, and it was the newly married Roland and
Mary Egerton-Warburton who between 1840 and 1860, created in all essentials the exquisite
garden of today. In the 1970s a woodland garden containing more than 100 varieties of
rhododendron was laid out; it leads to a woodland walk. The present house, in Victorian
Jacobean style, was built between 1832 and 1845. |
| Beeston Castle |
Off A49, 11 miles south-east of Chester |
A party of Royalists held out at Beeston Castle until
November 1645 - six months after their king's final defeat at the Battle of Naseby - and
Parliamentary forces virtually destroyed the castle a year later. Its remains stand
dramatically on top of an isolated red-sandstone outcrop rising to 500ft. There are
magnificent views across the Cheshire Plain to the Mersey and Wales, and to the Pennines
in Derbyshire. Remains of the inner ward and its gatehouse crown the highest point. They
date from the 13th century. On two sides of the castle is a dry moat, hewn out of solid
rock. Displays in the site museum tell the castle's story. |
| Capesthorne Hall |
On A34, 4 miles south of Alderley Edge |
A great fire in 1861 gutted the mansion which had been
remodelled in Jacobean style only 24 years earlier. The architect Anthony Salvin was
employed for the rebuilding, and he kept to the Jacobean style. Capesthorne has been owned
by the Bromley-Davenport family and their ancestors since the Conqueror's time. It
contains fine furniture, sculptures and paintings. A Victorian theatre in the stable wing
is still in use, and services are still held in an elegant Georgian chapel to the south of
the hall. The extensive park is drained by a lake and chain of pools overlooked by
colourful gardens. |
| Chester Cathedral |
Walled City on the Dee |
The glory of Chester Cathedral is its 13th century
choir. Beneath the lofty vault stand magnificently carved and canopied wooden choir
stalls; an elephant-and-castle figure adorns one bench end. Hugh Lupus, the Norman Earl of
Chester, refounded the Saxon church dedicated to St Werburgh of Mercia as a Benedictine
abbey in 1092. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries the abbey became a cathedral. It
was extensively restored in Victorian times. |
| Grosvenor Museum |
Walled City on the Dee |
Bygone Chester is vividly brought to life in the
Grosvenor Museum. The elegant Georgian drawing room is one of several period rooms
re-created in the museum. There are displays of glass and of silver, much of it made and
assayed in Chester. Pottery includes the slipware dish of 1671 showing the Arms of Charles
II. The museum's main theme, however, is Roman Chester. Dioramas, models and local finds
tell the story of the XXth Legion Valeria, which began the great Deva fortress in
AD76 and defended it for 200 years. |
| King Charles' Tower |
Walled City on the Dee |
It was from this tower that Charles I watched the
defeat of his army at Rowton Moor in 1645. It now contains displays re-creating the time
of the Civil War. The tower is part of Chester's ciy walls; these are unique in Britain,
for the 2 mile circuit dating from Roman and medieval times survives virtually intact. The
Eastgate stands on the site of Roman Chester's east gate. It was rebuilt in 1769, and its
clock was added to commemorate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897. Beyond is
Foregate Street, outside the medieval city. |
| The Rows |
Walled City on the Dee |
This handsome Victorian brick and timber-frame building
stands on the corner of Bridge Street and Watergate Street at The Cross, the meeting place
of Chester's main streets. Theses are lined by Chester's unique Rows - lines of buildings,
some medieval and others Victorian remodellings, which have shops on galleried walkways at
first-floor level. |
| Chester Visitor Centre |
Walled City on the Dee |
A reconstruction of one of Chester's Rows as it would
have looked in the 1850s is one of the ways in which Chester Visitor Centre gives
newcomers an introduction to the city. A video film takes visitors on an armchair tour,
and describes the city's history and customs. The centre also offers guided tours of the
city, including a daily Pastfinder Tour and a Ghost Tour, in which visitors are introduced
to the city's spooks, witches and demons. Opposite the centre is the half-excavated Roman
amphitheatre - the largest in Britain. |
| Gawsworth Hall |
On A536, 2.5 miles south of Macclesfield |
The 'Fighting Fittons' held the manor of Gawsworth from
1316 to 1663, and the present superb, long, low, half-timbered house was built in 1480. In
the following century, Sir Edward Fitton built a great wall to enclose the mansion and its
park with lake and medieval tilting ground, which remains largely unchanged today. Among
the famous visitors to Gawsworth was the Duke of Monmouth, who was 'royally' entertained
in 1682 when some 4000 people came to the park to see him. The house has fine furniture,
sculpture and paintings. |
| Little Budworth Country Park |
Off A49, 7 miles south-west of Northwich |
Visitors to this park on Little Budworth Common enter a
time capsule of prehistoric Britain, for the landscapes here survive almost untouched by
Man. The barren sands have limited the area's use to hunting and the occasional grazing of
cattle. There are heaths covered by heather, gorse and bracken; woods of silver birches,
and some of Cheshire's unique mosses - bogs in which islands of sphagnum moss float. The
woods are noted for fungi, insects and birds. There is and information board in the main
car park, and there are tracks and paths for walkers and horse riders. |
| Little Moreton Hall |
On A34, 4 miles south of Congleton |
Little Moreton Hall was begun by William Moreton, who
built a moated timber-framed house around a courtyard in the 15th century. His son added
the gatehouse. It was William's grandson who, like all fashionable Elizabethan gentlemen,
felt it essential to have a large but friendly room for formal entertaining and displaying
his paintings, and so built the panelled, 68ft Long Gallery over the gatehouse.
Fortunately, later Moretons resisted fashionable trends and preserved the Tudor
extravaganza; its jumbled gables and slightly leaning, timbered walls are superb monuments
to the arts of Tudor woodcarvers and plasterers. There are fine wall paintings and
intricately leaded windows, and a 16th century chapel. An Elizabethan herb garden and a
knot garden based on a design of 1688 lie within the moat. |
| Lyme Park |
Off A6, 0.5 miles west of Disley |
The Palladian exterior of this house conceals an
Elizabethan mansion. The Legh family owned the estate from 1397, and in 1541 Sir Piers
Legh swept away the original medieval house to make way for a new one. Its grand
gatehouse, and 120ft Long Gallery and drawing room, still survive intact. Peter Legh
commissioned the classical exterior and other alterations in 1720. The house contains
beautiful tapestries and furniture, including four chairs made by Thomas Chippendale.
These are reputedly upholstered with cloth from the cloak which Charles I wore at his
execution in 1649. The 'mansion within a mansion' overlooks a lake and stream more than
1100ft up on the Pennine moors. |
| Marbury Country Park |
Off A533, 2.5 miles north of Northwich |
This 200 acre park remains a gracious country estate,
although its great house - Marbury Hall - was pulled down in 1968 after years of
dereliction. An old ice house and avenues of limes planted in the 1840s survive. Terraces
lead down from the house site to Budworth Mere, where a bird hide overlooks Marbury Reed
Bed. Several footpaths cross the park, and one beside the mere has splendid views across
to Great Budworth village. A 2 mile 'Fact or Fiction Walk' explores some of the legends
associated with the area, and there is a waymarked horse ride. The Trent and Mersey Canal
forms the park's eastern boundary. |
| Norton Priory Museum |
Off A558, 2 miles east of Runcorn |
Only 20 years before he dissolved Norton Priory in
1536, Henry VIII gave 30 great oaks from nearby Delamere Forest to repair fire damage to
the building. In 1545 the Brooke family bought the 400-year-old priory and its estates,
and turned part of it into a Tudor house. A Georgian mansion replaced this in about 1750,
but this was demolished in 1928 and only the medieval undercroft survives. Excavations of
the site began in 1971, and in 1982 a museum opened to explain the site's story, and show
what its buildings looked like. Displays give a clear insight into the everday life of the
Augustinian canons who lived and worshipped at Norton, and of the craftsmen who made the
priory. |
| Tatton Park |
Off A50, 2 miles north of Knutsford |
Little has changed at Tatton Park since the house was
built by Samuel Wyatt for the Egertons towards the end of the 18th century. The only
innovation is in Tenants' Hall, which contains a museum of hunting trophies, vintage
vehicles and curios collected by the last Lord Egerton. There is plenty to see and do at
Tatton. Rooms in the pre-Reformation Old Hall, where the Egertons lived for two centuries
before they built their mansion, have been restored in the manner of their appropriate
periods. So has the Home Farm which, though still a working entity, largely employs the
methods of half a century ago. Visitors can fish, bathe and sail in Tatton Mere. There is
also a Wartime Tatton Trail. During the Second World War, secret agents, commandos and
some 60,000 paratroops made their initial training parachute jumps at Tatton. |
| Vale Royal Abbey |
Off A556, 2.5 miles south of Northwich |
Edward I laid the altar foundation stone of the abbey
in 1277. In 1346, however, a violent storm destroyed the abbey, and the rebuilding was not
completed until 1360. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, a local landowner acquired
the property for £450. He demolished the abbey church and used its stone to create a new
house, incorporating the abbey's surviving buildings. The Cholmondeley family, owners of
the estate from 1616 until 1947, altered the Tudor mansion, and in the 1830s the Victorian
architect Edward Blore enlarged it. The house has now been converted into apartments, but
visitors can still see the state rooms, including the armoury, great hall, dining hall and
library. |
| Warrington Museum and Art Gallery |
Near town centre of Warrington |
An actor's mask found at Wilderspool on the outskirts
of Warrington is one of many Roman items in a museum which covers the life of man in the
district from prehistoric times to the present day. Glass has been made in Warrington
since the 2nd century AD, and the museum has fine examples of the work of local 18th and
19th century glassmakers. Ceramics and folk material and dress from all over the world
feature in other sections. There are some 1000 paintings, including fine Victorian oils,
and early English watercolours by masters such as Peter de Wint and David Cox. Geology and
wildlife are also covered. |
