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Knutsford

Knutsford and its people were the heroes of one of the most durable of Victorian novels, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford which recently received an acclaimed BBC-TV adaptation. Mrs Gaskell’s gently humorous, sympathetic but sharply-observed portrait of the little Cheshire town and the foibles and pre-occupations of its citizens, was first published in 1853 and is still delighting readers today. Elizabeth was scarcely a month old when she came to Knutsford. Her mother had died shortly after her birth: her father sent her here to be brought up by an aunt who lived in a road which has now been re-named Gaskell Avenue. The motherless child grew up to be both strikingly beautiful and exceptionally intelligent. Early on she evinced a lively interest in the town’s characters and its history. (She was intrigued, for example, to find that in the house next door to her aunt’s had once lived a notorious highwayman, Edward Higgins, hanged for his crimes in 1767. She wrote a story about him). Marriage to William Gaskell, a Unitarian pastor in Manchester, took her away from Knutsford, although she returned often and for long periods, and after her death in 1865 was buried in the grounds of the Unitarian Chapel here.

The Knutsford that Elizabeth Gaskell knew so well and wrote about so vividly has expanded a great deal since those days of course, but in its compact centre, now designated an “outstanding area of conservation”, the narrow streets and cobbled alleys still evoke the intimacy of a small Victorian town. Two parallel roads, Toft Street and King Street, form a rectangle surrounding the old town. But Mrs Gaskell would surely be astonished by the building erected in King Street to her memory by Mr Richard Harding Watt in 1907. A gifted entrepreneur, Mr Watt had made a huge fortune in Manchester as a glove manufacturer, but what really aroused his enthusiasm was the flamboyant architecture he had seen during his travels through Spain, southern Italy and the Near East.

On his return, he spent lavishly on trying to transform Knutsford in Cheshire into Knutsford-on-the-Mediterranean. At the north end of the town, he built a laundry complete with Byzantine domes and a minaret. A vaguely Ottoman style of architecture welcomed serious-minded artisans to his Ruskin Reading Rooms. In Legh Road, he erected a series of villas whose south-facing frontages are clearly in need of a really hot sun. And in King Street, as homage to the town’s most famous resident, Richard Watt spent thousands of Victorian pounds on the Gaskell Memorial Tower. This tall, blank-walled building seems a rather incongruous tribute to the author who was herself so open and so down-to-earth.

But it is eccentrics like Richard Watt who make English architecture as interesting as it is. He was so proud of his contribution to the town’s new buildings that, travelling on his coach to the railway station, he would rise to his feet and raise his hat to salute them. As he did so, one day in 1913, his horse suddenly shied, the carriage overturned, and Richard Watt was thrown out and killed. What other changes he might have made to this grand old town, had he lived, we can only imagine.

Close by, in Tatton Street, is the Knutsford Heritage Centre. Knutsford is a town with a long history – Edward I granted the town a Charter in 1262, (on August 3rd of that year, to be precise); at the same time, the local landowner, William de Tabley, was given a money-making licence to control the market. The Heritage Centre is housed in a restored 17th century timber-framed building which in Victorian times was a smithy. During the restoration, the old forge and bellows were found in a remarkable state of preservation. One of the many fascinating exhibits is the Knutsford Millennium Tapestry, a 40ft triptych to which some 3,000 people brought their talents.The wrought iron gate in front of the centre was specially created for the Centre and depicts dancing girls taking part in Knutsford’s famous Royal May Day celebrations – Royal because in 1887 the Prince and Princess of Wales honoured the festivities with their presence. Every May Day the town centre streets are closed to all traffic except for the May Queen’s procession in which colourful characters such as “Jack in Green”, “Highwayman Higgins”, “Lord Chamberlain”, Morris and Maypole dancers, and many others take part. One curious tradition whose origins are unknown is the practice of covering the streets and pavements with ordinary sand and then, using white sand, creating elaborate patterns on top.

An unusual exhibition and well worth visiting is the Penny Farthing Museum located in the Courtyard Coffee House off King Street. The collection, started in 1978 by Glynn Stockdale, includes a replica of the famous Starley giant with a front wheel 7ft in diameter.

Sweeping up to the very edge of Knutsford are the grounds of Tatton Park, 2,000 acres of exquisite parkland landscaped in the 18th century by the celebrated Humphrey Repton. This lovely park, where herds of red and fallow deer roam at will, provides a worthy setting for the noble Georgian mansion designed by the equally celebrated architect Samuel Wyatt. The combination of the two men’s talents created a house and park that have become one of the National Trust’s most visited attractions. Tatton’s opulent staterooms, containing paintings by artists such as Canaletto and Van Dyck along with superb collections of porcelain and furniture, provided the television series Brideshead Revisited with a sumptuous setting for Marchmain House.

More than 200 elegant pieces of furniture were commissioned from the celebrated cabinet-makers, Gillow of Lancaster. Particularly fine are the superb bookcases in the Library, constructed to house the Egerton family’s collection of more than 8000 books. By contrast, the stark servants’ rooms and cellars give a vivid idea of what life below stairs was really like. The Egerton family built Tatton Park to replace the much earlier Tudor Old Hall which nestles in a wood in the deer park and dates back to around 1520. Here, visitors are given a guided tour through time from the late Middle Ages up to the 1950s. Flickering light from candles reveals the ancient timber roof of the Great Hall, supported by ornate quatrefoils, while underfoot, the floor is strewn with rushes, providing a warm place for the medieval Lord of the Manor and his servants to sleep. There’s much more: Home Farm is a working farm, but working now as it did in the 1930s, complete with vintage machinery. Traditional crafts, (including pottery), stables and many farm animals provide a complete picture of rural life some sixty years ago. Tatton’s famous gardens include a Victorian maze, an orangery and fernery, a serene Japanese garden, American redwoods, and a splendid Italian terraced garden. There’s also a busy programme of educational activities for children, an adventure playground, shops, and a restaurant. You can even get married in the sumptuous mansion and hold your reception either in the house itself, in the recently refurbished Tenants Hall which can cater for parties of up to 430, or in a marquee in the magnificent grounds. With so much on offer no wonder Tatton Park has been described as the most complete historic estate in the country.

Just to the west of Knutsford, on the A5033, is Tabley House, home of the Leicester family from 1272 to 1975. Mrs Gaskell often came to picnic in the grounds of the last of their houses, a stately Georgian mansion designed by John Carr for the first Lord de Tabley in 1761. This Lord de Tabley loved paintings and it was his son’s passion for art, and his hunger for others to share it, which led to the creation of London’s National Gallery. His personal collection of English pictures, on display in Tabley House, includes works by Turner (who painted the house several times), Lely, Reynolds, Opie and Martin Danby, along with furniture by Chippendale, and fascinating family memorabilia spanning three centuries. The 17th century chapel next to the house looks perfectly in place but it was originally built on an island in Tabley Mere and only moved to its present site in 1927. In the Old School at Tabley is the Cuckoo Land & Clock Museum with many cuckoo clocks, trumpeter clocks and fairground organs.