Building record 1543/1/1 - Ridge Hall Farmhouse

<1> Bullock W, 1878, Round About. Notes of Travel in Yorkshire, with a Short History of Macclesfield (Book). SCH2915.

Ridge Hall Farmhouse, Ridge Hill. Formerly a moated mansion and inhabited from 1431 to 1781 by a branch of the Leghs of Lyme.

<2> Various, Various, Oral communication to the HER (Oral Communication). SCH2330.

The will of John Legh of Ridge, who died in 1578, mentions ‘…the hall, kyttchen, the parlour and the chambers…’ in his mansion.

<3> Ormerod, G., 1882, The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester, vol.III p.763-5 (Book). SCH1389.

‘Ridge Hall appears to have been an Elizabethan building, and bore the date 1580. Many years ago the hall was pulled down, and a plain farmhouse erected on the site: the moat being the only relic left; but in the farmyard were formerly two stone pillars of geat antiquity, which some years ago were removed to the Macclesfield Public Park…’

<4> English Heritage, 2005, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest, 58660 (Digital Archive). SCH4666.

Farmhouse. Dated 1580 on date-stone with seventeenth and nineteenth century additions and alterations. Coursed rubble with ashlar dressings and stone slate roof. Two storeys. Entrance front Older two bay portion at right with ashlar quoins to right. Blocked door at ground floor left with two-light blocked stone surrounded window to right. Two similar blocked windows to first floor with rectangular date-stone set between floors at centre. Blocked windows all have chamfered mullions. Nineteenth century two-light windows imposed at centre of both floors. To left of this is later seventeenth century portion flush with earlier portion and having stone quoins at corners. Three two-light casement windows to ground and first floors with gabled porch between second and third bays from left containing seventeenth century studded wooden door. Rear: twentieth century addition at left with nineteenth century fenestration to rest.

Interior: Open tread single flight seventeenth century staircase with barley-sugar twist balusters with vase bases. Similar barley-sugar twist newel posts. Moulded handrail and panelled tread plate. Further blocked mullioned two-light window to a bathroom at rear of dated block.

The site of the house is surrounded by a moat and the original, larger house was reputedly largely destroyed in the Civil War.

<5> Earwaker, J P, 1877-1880, East Cheshire Past & Present, vol.II p.447-9 (Book). SCH1080.