Conservation Area: Legh Road (Knutsford) Conservation Area (085)

The Legh Road Conservation Area forms part of the town of Knutsford, with which it has strong associations through the work of Richard Harding Watt, a local philanthropist and architectural enthusiast who built a number of buildings in both Legh Road and the town centre. Watt was a Manchester glove merchant who was wealthy enough to indulge his passion for travel and who brought back some unusual ideas from his visits to the Mediterranean and beyond. The villas he built, for himself and which he let and sold in Legh Road, are a unique collection of buildings, which are the most distinctive feature of the conservation area; the majority are listed buildings. They are a nationally important collection. The conservation area is split into three well-defined areas, of which the Richard Harding Watt buildings fall within the central part. Earlier developments run along the main arterial routes which form the outer edges of the Conservation Area to the east and west, which each have a distinct character. The Legh Road Conservation Area also includes a number of seventeenth century, eighteenth century, late Georgian, Victorian, Edwardian and inter-war houses, most of which are set in large, mature gardens. The key characteristics are: • Leafy, suburban fringe, dominated by mixed planting with many trees of 100+ years of age • Generous curving road alignments, laid out in accordance with the fashionable ‘estate’ / park developments of the mid-late nineteenth century • Highly unusual suite of townscape, with buildings commissioned by R H Watt, adopting a strong Mediterranean influence and distinct architectural language • Arts and Crafts houses, with local reference points in use of materials • Large, polychromatic brick houses, often erected on raised platforms with commanding presence • Green corridor and tree canopy linking plantations, street trees, gardens and wildlife reserve • Picturesque Estate character and sporadic historic buildings along Chelford Road in approaches to Booths Hall and Legh estate • Small-scale of Toft Hall / Leycester estate cottages scattered along Toft Road • Part-hidden, high-status, genteel housing throughout the conservation area