PECKFORTON CASTLE

Grid Ref: SJ 532 580
Date 28 June 2008 & 11 April 2009

Peckforton Castle

Inner Gatehouse		Exterior of the bailey with chapel above
An interior view		The belfry (fake bells!)
Walk from Bunbury to Peckforton, April 2009		Walk from Bunbury to Peckforton
Typical Peckforton farmhouse colours		Thatched Cottage

Peckforton Castle was designed by Anthony Salvin and built for the first Lord Tollemache around 1844-50.  It cost £60,000.  By 1883, Lord Tollemache owned 35,000 acres.  He made a big investment in dairy farming, building 55 farmhouses at a cost £148,000 and spent a similar amount on cottages. Harthill was the administrative centre for the estate.  Cheese was made on the farms and the whey was used by the farm labourers to feed their pigs.  The farmhouses and cottages are recognisable by their distinctive dark red paintwork. 

Tollemache was considered a model landlord by Gladstone.  However, the castle for both its location and structure is eminently defendable.  The 1840s saw revolution and rebellion across Europe and in England it was the time of the Chartist riots. 

The castle is now a hotel and is a popular venue for weddings.  The entrance from the main road takes one up a winding lane through the woods.  The "moat" never held water.  The huge inner gatehouse leads one into the inner bailey at an elevation of about 450 feet above sea level.  There is a chapel to the south and the main range of buildings to the north.  The interior is in keeping with the mediaeval theme with massive walls in evidence everywhere and the belfry can be see from an interior corridor.  The castel cannot be seen easily from the surrounding area because of the trees.  The tops of the towers are glimpsed from a distance and from Beeston Castle.

Brief outline of the Tollemache family.

The Tollemache family married into the Wilbraham family and thus acquired land in Cheshire.   The Wilbrahams of Woodhey traced their ancestry back to Sir Richard de Wylburghham, Lord of Wymincham and Radnor in right of his second wife.  He died about 1273.   His second wife was Letice, eldest daughter and coheiress of William de Venables of Wymincham and Radenore, younger son of Sir William Venables, baron of Kinderton.  Woodhey was obtained about 1416 by the marriage to Thomas de Wilberham of Radnor to Margaret the daughter and heiress of John de Golborne.  The following simplified tree is taken from Ormerod's, work.

• 1. Sir Thomas Wilbraham of Woodhey, sheriff of Cheshire, died August 1692
  + Elizabeth, daughter and heir of Edward Mitton of Weston under Lizard in Staffordshire.  This couple had four daughters, one of whom died in infancy.  Elizabeth married Sir Thomas Middleton of Chirk Castle in Denbighshire and Mary married Richard Earl of Bradford.  We follow Grace .
  • 2.  Grace Wilbraham married 1680 and died 1744
  • + Lionel Tollemache of Helmington, Lord Huntingtour and 2nd Earl of Dysart in Scotland, born 1648 died 1726/7 and came into the Woodhey estate through his wife.
    • 3.   Elizabeth married Sir Robert Cotton of Combermere and died without issue
    • 3.   Lionel Tollemache of Helmingham, Lord Huntingtour, died 1712, which was before his father.
    • +    ?  Cavendish
      • 4.  Lionel Tollemache, 3rd Earl of Dysart, born 1707, married 1729 and died 1770
      • +   Grace Carteret, daughter of John 1st Earl Granville, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.  She died in 1755
        • 5.  Lionel Tollemache, 4th Earl of Dysart
        • 5.  Wilbraham Tollemache, 5th Earl of Dysart, was heir to his brother and died without issue in 1821 and was suceeded by his sister as the Countess of Dysart.  She married John Manners of Grantham, Lincolnshire.
        • 5.   Jane Tollemache, 2nd daughter married in 1771 (first husband)
        • +    John Delap Halliday of Leasowes in Shropshire
          • 6.  John Richard Delap Halliday, admiral in the RN.  He assumed the additional name of Tollemache after succeeding to the Peckforton, Helmingham and various Cheshire estates as coheir of the Earls of Dysart.  He died in 1837.
          • +   Elizabeth Stratford, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Aldborough  she died in 1861
            • 7.  John Tollemache of Peckforton Castle and Helmingham Hall in Suffolk, MP for Cheshire1841-1872, created Lord Tollemache of Helmingham.  Born 1805 and living in 1880.  He built Peckforton Castle
            • +  Minnie daughter of James Duff by his wife Elizabeth Charlotte, daughter of Sir George Beeston Prescott, married 1850 and had issue
              • 8. Wilbraham Frederick Tollemache of Tilston Lodge, MP for Mid Cheshire in 1872 and 1880, born 1832
            • 7.   Wilbraham Spencer Tollemache of Dorfold Hall, born 1807, sheriff of Cheshire in 1865, formerly of the Rifle Brigade and Coldstream Guards
            • +    Ann, eldest daughter of the Rev. James Tomkinson of Dorfold Hall, married 1844.

Sources

The Buildings of England, Cheshire, by Nikolaus Pevsner and Edward Hubbard, Yale University Press, 2003, ISBN 0 300 09588 0
The History of the County Palatine and City of Chester, incorporated with a republication of King's Vale Royal and Leycester's Cheshire Antiquities, by George Ormerod, 2nd Ed., revised and enlarged by Thomas Helsby, Esq., published by George Routledge and sons, Ludgate Hill, London, 1882.

Cheshire Antiquities
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