Building record 16030 - Warford Hall, Great Warford

<1> The Planning Studio, 2021, Heritage Statement: Warford Hall Barns, Warford Hall Drive, Great Warford, SK9 7TP, R4816 (Client Report). SCH9710.

Country house designed by architect W Roberts and built in 1867 by Isaac Massey, a builder of Alderley Edge, for J C Rowley Esq. Built on the site of an earlier farmhouse with outbuildings, depicted on the Tithe Map (1842). Kelly's Cheshire Directory of 1902 shows that Warford Hall was occupied by Harold Agnew. It is unknown if his wealth is associated with the Agnew family of art dealers whose business had started in Manchester. In 1906 Warford Hall with 77 acres of land was bought by the Lancashire and Cheshire Society for the Permanent Care of the Feeble-minded, founded in 1898. Its pioneer in care was Mary Dendy who had established the Sandlebridge Boarding School on a nearby site in 1902; the whole institution, on its various sites in Great Warford, was from 1933 known as the Mary Dendy Home. The hall was originally intended to serve as a home for older girls. It was adapted for this purpose and opened in 1908. It also contained a Governers' meeting room and the outbuildings were used as a laundry which also served the nearby Soss Moss home for epileptic children. Warford Hall became part of the National Health Service when it was established in 1948 and became known as a hospital, although its function remained essentially residential. In 1968 the hall provided 21 beds for the sick and permanently frail. In the late 1980s the NHS closed Warford Hall which was sold in 1992 to a firm of architects and used for offices.

The Hall is a two-storeyed, brick built building with dressings in Alderley Edge stone and slated roofs. It has an irregular, compact plan with principal elevations facing west and north. The main entrance sits at the north-west corner where there is a diagonally set tower with steep pitched roof. The whole is built in Italianate style.

To the south-east of the main hall is an L-shaped range of outbuildings, also brick built with slate roofing. At the time of the report, the barns are all in current use for offices and spa. They have been considerably altered internally over time with replacement windows across all elevations and are largely of later 19th Century construction rather than remnants of the original farmstead depicted on the Tithe mapping. They would have likely to have been created in the form as they appear today as staff quarters to the hall by Harold Agnew who lived at the Hall in the late 19th Century.

The development of the dairying industry on the Cheshire Plain resulting in the enlargement of farms is documented from the late 17th century in Cheshire, in tandem with the development of the dairying industry. The rebuilding of farmsteads in the mid- to late 19th century was being driven by estates.