Site Event/Activity record ECH6427 - Historic Building Recording and Watching Brief at 70 Birtles Road, Macclesfield

An historic building survey and watching brief was undertaken in November 2016 for Lower Roewood Farm, 70 Birtles Road, before and during its demolition, in advance of development of new residential housing on the site. The house is suggested to date to the sixteenth/seventeenth centuries on the basis of surviving floor and roof timbers. It was probably built as a two cell cottage, with a fully timber-framed structure and thatched roof. The earliest map evidence is the Tithe Map of 1835 which depicts a building slightly set back from Birtles Road with two small rear projections. The west part of the building probably served as a shippon for housing livestock. Dendrochronological dating was requested on sections of the timbers recovered from the property, but the timber was not suitable for this type of dating. (1)