Eloping with a Gibbon
Shrigley, Bollington & The Nab
“No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.”
- William Henry Davies
I have always loved the Cheshire countryside. A couple of times while visiting this area, I stayed in a hotel at Pott Shrigley simply because I found it hard to believe that that was the name of a real place. It is a real place, a very pleasant real place, as it happens. Shrigley Hall is now a hotel but was originally a grand Regency style, sandstone country home built in 1825 for the mill owner and High Sheriff of Cheshire, William Turner. Soon afterwards, his fifteen-year-old daughter, Ellen, was taken from her boarding school in Liverpool by a man with the glorious name of Edward Gibbon Wakefield.
Together they travelled to Gretna Green where they were married. They were finally caught in Calais; the marriage was annulled and 30-year-old Gibbon was sentenced to three years imprisonment. This wasn’t his first offence, either. In 1817, he had eloped to Scotland with the 17-year-old heiress, Eliza Pattle and, following the marriage, her mother gave the young couple £70,000 – about eight million quid in today’s money. They had three children together before Eliza died in childbirth aged just twenty-one.
After the annulment and Edward’s imprisonment, Ellen Turner married again but died at the age of 19 after giving birth to her only child Ellen Jane who would go on to inherit Shrigley Hall from her grandfather. In 1929 the Hall was sold for £3,000 – about £191,000 today, the price of a 2-bedroom bungalow in Macclesfield – to the religious order, the Salesians of Don Bosco who subsequently converted the house into a missionary college and built a church dedicated to Saint John Bosco. I swear, I haven’t made any of these names up, not Pott Shrigley, not Edward Gibbon Wakefield and not Saint John Bosco. I didn’t even know saints had surnames.
I stayed here twice and on both occasions there was a great deal of building work going on, which was why I could afford to stay there. Even then I had a room in the attic. It’s all finished now and I couldn’t afford to stay there anymore, even in the servants’ quarters.
Even during the refurbishment it was an impressive house, with a huge main staircase under a cream, dark blue and gilded dome with a circular skylight in the apex. It is a stunning place and the grounds and views from there are no less spectacular. The whole of city centre Manchester is visible in the distance with the intervening thirteen miles seeming, from this viewpoint, to be largely wooded with just the spires of Poynton and Stockport churches poking out through the leafy canopy. Walking out of the grounds and turning left in warm early evening sunshine toward the village of Pott Shrigley itself, I pass Pott Hall; a squat stone church; and a sparkling stream where sunlight dances on the ripples made by lazy ducks.
I decide to head up to Nab Head, 285 metres above sea level but just 95 metres above where I currently stand. I do this for no other reason than it takes me past Cockshead Hey Farm and, hey, I’m that childish. I also do it in anticipation of the view. I live in East Anglia, so anything more than about four foot six inches above sea level is an amazing vantage point. Where I live, if your dog runs away, you can see him for two days. For me 95 metres is Kilimanjaro. At the top - yes, I made it to the top – is a Bronze Age bowl barrow which must have contained the remains of some fairly important people for their relatives to go to the bother of lugging them up here.
There are few better views to spend eternity with, though. Rolling green hills, woods, the skyline of Manchester and the gritstone town of Bollington in the valley below. Bollington, like much of this area, spent the eighteenth, nineteenth and a fair chunk of the twentieth centuries, dominated by its mills. The chimney of Clarence Mill is still visible at the north-eastern edge of the town and the massive Aldephi Mill sits on the far side of the town alongside the Macclesfield canal. Both of the mills were built by the Swindells family in the mid-19th century, today they house offices and deal more in IT and pharmaceuticals than in cotton.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, dozens of Bleases – distant cousins of mine – lived and worked and died in Bollington as cotton winders and bricklayers. One, my sixth cousin two times removed, was even born in Pott Shrigley. He had the wonderful name of Hedley Blease, as they like odd names in Pott Shrigley. He was three years old when they took the 1881 census and he lived with his parents, brothers and sisters in Bollington. Ten years later they’re living in nearby Rainow and his father, Charles Blease, is a blacksmith. Hedley married Mary Elizabeth Owen on Boxing Day 1899. By the time of the 1901 census they are living in Fazakerley and he is a coachman. His mother-in-law, Sarah Owen, is visiting; probably because he and Mary have just had their first child, two-week-old William Hedley Blease. They had another son, Ronald, in 1904. By 1911, at the age of just 33, he is a widower, living alone and working as a chauffeur. Young William went on to be a chauffeur, just like his dad but died in 1930 at the age of 29. In 1938 Hedley appears in the Kelly’s trade directory as a motor cab proprietor of 16 Oak Vale, Broad Green Road, Liverpool and in 1939, he’s a taxi driver and owner in the city. He died in 1942 at the age of 65, his occupation was listed as chauffeur, obviously the profession he was proudest of. There are billions of stories like Hedley’s around the world, most of which we never learn about.
On the other side of Bollington, on Kerridge Hill, stands White Nancy, a white building that resembles the top half of a wine bottle or one of those kilns that you still see occasionally around the Potteries. It is clearly visible from the top of Nab Head. Apparently, White Nancy was built by a local landowner, John Gaskell, in 1817 to commemorate the Duke of Wellington’s victory at the Battle of Waterloo. History fails to recall why or even if he had been diagnosed with a recognised mental illness. I mean, come on, throw a party, send the Iron Duke a Well Done card, don’t build a massive useless thing in the shape of half a bottle and call it Nancy, that’s just mad.
Beyond that, and past Macclesfield, near the summit of Croker Hill, I can see the 238-foot tall, reinforced concrete, Sutton Common BT radio tower, built in the 1950s as part of the “Backbone” chain of radio stations which linked the south-east of England to Scotland, designed to provide resilient radio communications following nuclear attack. Off in the far distance I think I can just make out the cooling towers of the Fiddlers Ferry power station, twenty-five miles away in Widnes. It was getting quite late by the time I made it back to my room in the attic at Shrigley Hall.
To see some more photographs of Shigley, Bollington & The Nab click here:
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Next week we’re off down south to find out how much grimmer it really is than Up North.
Great read, learnt lots and laughed out loud a few times.