Building record 1241/0/9 - Old Court House and West Court, Chelford Road

<1> Department for the Environment, Various, Provisional List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest, 792-1/2/6 (Report). SCH2744.

Old Courthouse, Chelford Road. Apparently built round Old Court Room which is seventeenth century, but much altered and of many dates, mainly late eighteenth and mid nineteenth century. A gabled timber framed building now cemented over and with modern ground floor bay. House generally painted brick and slate roofs. Good block of seventeenth century outbuildings to left of house, timber framed with whitewashed brick infilling.

Interior: Court Room of two storeys high, possibly with gallery removed. Seventeenth century century panelling stated to have been removed from adjoining room and refixed. Good late eighteenth century Drawing Room. Full architectural description.

<2> Historic England, 2011, The National Heritage List for England, 1388316 (Web Site). SCH6528.

House now divided as two dwellings. Probably early seventeenth century, extended late eighteenth century or early nineteenth century. Original section probably timber-framed now rendered over, the rest brick, some painted. Stone-flagged and Welsh slate roofs.

EXTERIOR: original building a small gabled range, externally two-storeyed, but open to the roof inside. Canted bay to ground floor in gable, with fixed light wood mullion with leaded lights in jettied upper storey. Fixed-light six- and three-light mullioned window in return elevation to right. Rear of this gabled range may be a somewhat later addition: brick with Welsh slate roof, and inserted windows in gable end. Stack on right-hand gable wall. Late eighteenth-century extension adjoins this building to the left: painted brick with hipped slate roof. Two-storeyed, square in plan comprising a single room on each floor. Tripartite sashes with flat-arched brick heads in east elevation, paired twelve-pane sashes to south. Wrought-iron brackets to overhanging eaves. At the rear angle of this block, a single-storey porch with chamfered pointed entrance arch gives access to hall contained in a small tower built against the original range, square in plan and with pyramidal roof. Lean-to against ground floor of original range links to single storey hipped roofed extension (probably late nineteenth century) with gable facing south. West Court forms a separate dwelling to the north but was formerly part of the same building. It comprises two parallel two-storeyed four-window ranges. Rear (west) range early nineteenth century. Brick with thirty-pane sash windows to first floor, with flat-arched brick heads and stone sills. Painted brick east range seems somewhat later but may have been re-fenestrated.

INTERIOR: not inspected.

HISTORY: the original building said to have been the Old Court Room itself, the interior of the full-height hall containing seventeenth century panelling possibly not in situ.

<3> Cheshire County Council, 2002, Cheshire Historic Towns Survey: Macclesfield Borough Part 1: Archaeological Assessments, Knutsford p.6 (Report). SCH6978.

Old Courthouse on Chelford Road was built around an old Courtroom, which is seventeenth century in date.

<4> Garry Miller Historic Building Consultancy, 2013, West Court, Chelford Road, Knutsford, Cheshire East. Heritage Assessment (Client Report). SCH7231.

The Old Court House contains the oldest elements of the site and is of at least early seventeenth century date and presumed to be timber-framed. It contains a full-height hall and is said to have been used as a court room. West Court represents a later enlargement of this building and comprises two back-to-back ranges: the west one older and probably early mid eighteenth century, the east added in the mid-nineteenth century in two stages. The original agricultural role of the site is indicated by a seventeenth century timber-framed former stable, separately listed Grade II, adjoining The Old Court House. By the middle of the nineteenth century however, The Old Court House had become a polite middle-class residence. The building was subdivided into two dwellings by the late 1960s.