Conservation Area: Mobberley Conservation Area (087)

Mobberley is a rural village some two miles or three kilometres east of Knutsford on the main road to Wilmslow and Alderley Edge. It is a dispersed settlement with three centres: one at the parish church of St Wilfrid; one, to the south, at the site of a former mill on the Mobberley Brook, and one at Knolls Green to the east. Evidence at St Wilfrid’s Church indicates a Saxon settlement. There was also an Augustinian Priory founded in 1206, although nothing of this is known to survive. Apart from the church and a Saxon cross base, the oldest existing buildings in Mobberley date from the early seventeenth century. The conservation area is notable for the survival of so many buildings from the seventeenth century and from a later building boom in the late-eighteenth century. The confident scale of Mobberley Old Hall, Newton Hall and Antrobus Hall is offset by the numerous farmhouses and cottages. The rural character of pastoral parkland landscapes and mature woodland has endured due to the residual patronage of landed estates and the presence of working farms. This is remarkable given the pressures of nearby towns and, indeed, Manchester Airport. The main detractors from Mobberley’s character have been the ribbon development of the twentieth century along Hall Lane and Faulkner’s Lane, high levels of traffic on Hall Lane and Town Lane, which is the main road between Knutsford and Alderley Edge, aircraft noise from the airport and uninformed alteration of historic buildings.