Building record 15732/1 - Site of Aldersey Hall

<1> Cheshire Gardens Trust, 2015 - 2021, Cheshire Gardens Trust Research and Recording Chester City Reports, Aldersey Hall 2001 (Unpublished Report). SCH9313.

The house was mainly built by Rev. Samuel Aldersey (1673-1742) who inherited the Aldersey estate in 1715, and is said to have rebuilt Aldersey Hall as a country house.

His great-grandson, Samuel (1776-1855) in turn inherited the estate from his father in 1803 and further enlarged and remodelled the house in about 1807-11. The exterior was stuccoed and a
stone porch with pairs of unfluted Doric columns added.

In 1902 the Hall was taken over and used as a training centre for women in horticulture and agriculture being known as the Elmwood School of Gardening [or Elmwood Nurseries] [est 1902 in Portsmouth].
There was accommodation provided for 15 residential students and courses covered cookery, fruit and vegetable preservation, floral art and landscape gardening, as well as horticulture.

In the gardens there was one of the finest cedar trees in the country and also an old-fashioned walled garden. The Hall was still in use as an agricultural school in 1939.

The house was requisitioned during the Second World War, and returned to the family in poor condition.

The final member of the family at the hall inherited the estate from his father in 1930, but first let and c.1958 demolished Aldersey Hall as the house had become derelict. Two lodges and two sets of gate piers are all that remain

<2> Greenwood, C. & Greenwood J., 1819, Map of the County Palatine of Chester (Maps and Plans). SCH2115.

Site of the house shown. Marked Aldersey Hall

<3> Bryant, A., 1831, Map of the County Palatine of Chester (Maps and Plans). SCH2114.

U shaped buildings marked The Hall shown within an area of Parkland

<4> See map for surveyor, c.1837-51, Cheshire Tithe Maps and Awards, EDT 120/2 Coddington (Maps and Plans). SCH3266.

Buildings, Gardens and Pleasure grounds around the Hall

<5> Ordnance Survey, 1909-1912, Ordnance Survey Second Revision County Series (Epoch 3) 25 inch to 1 mile - Cheshire, 05SJ4956 1911 (Maps and Plans). SCH4361.

Hall shown surrounded by ornamental and walled garden.

<6> de Figueiredo P & Treuherz J, 1988, Cheshire Country Houses, p.211 (Book). SCH785.

A Plain block-like house of stucco with classical interior. It was built in 1805 to replace the earlier house of the Aldersey family but was demolished c.1958. A housing estate now occupies the site in the middle of derelict parkland and all that remains are two pairs of gate piers, two lodges and a section of the walled garden with a gate dated 1901.