Site Event/Activity record ECH6702 - The Romping Donkey, Hassall Green, Betchton, Cheshire: Historic Building Recording Analytical Assessment

A building survey and photographic record was produced in January 2018 for the Romping Donkey, Hassall Green, Betchton, a Grade II Listed public house (formerly the Red Lion Inn), in advance of its conversion to a single dwelling. The building has been vacant since early 2012. Access to all parts of the building was available internally and the photographic evidence reflects this. Access to the exterior of the historic core was restricted by the later additions and the temporary propping structures providing stability to the timber frame. The Romping Donkey is a complex of buildings, mainly modern, based around a circa seventeenth century, two storey, timber-framed core. Only this central core, the “timber framed range” is considered to be of any heritage value. The buildings which surround the original section vary in age but are mainly modern, constructed in the twentieth century. The original brick nineteenth century west wing building was demolished in 2014 and rebuilt in 2015/16. The building has most recently been used as a public house. Evidence from census returns hints that the building was in use as a public house in 1841, the earliest modern census available. It is likely that the building became a public house with the construction and opening of the Trent and Mersey Canal and its locks to the south of the site in the 1770’s, although there is no documentary evidence to substantiate this. (1)