Staircase House (30/30a Market Place) is a
Grade II* listed medieval
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
building dating from around 1460 situated in
Stockport, historically in
Cheshire, now within
Greater Manchester
Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tam ...
, England. The house is famous for its rare
Jacobean cage
newel
A newel, also called a central pole or support column, is the central supporting pillar of a staircase. It can also refer to an upright post that supports and/or terminates the handrail of a stair banister (the "newel post"). In stairs having st ...
staircase. An audio guide recounts the full history of the house.
History
Staircase House, (), is in its origins a
cruck
A cruck or crook frame is a curved timber, one of a pair, which support the roof of a building, historically used in England and Wales. This type of timber framing consists of long, generally naturally curved, timber members that lean inwards and ...
timber
Lumber is wood that has been processed into dimensional lumber, including beams and planks or boards, a stage in the process of wood production. Lumber is mainly used for construction framing, as well as finishing (floors, wall panels, w ...
building, with its earliest known surviving timbers dating from 1459 to 1460 on the basis of
dendrochronology.
Very little is known of the property's early history, though it is thought that it may have been the home of William Dodge who, in 1483, was the Mayor of Stockport.
The first residents of whom there is certainty were the Shallcross family who owned the House from 1605 to 1730. Members of the landed gentry, with their seat just across the county boundary, in
Derbyshire
Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...
, it was they who in 1618 installed the distinctive Jacobean cage newel staircase, from which the house takes its modern name.
The staircase has some unusual features, such as the carving covering much of the woodwork.
The characteristic of a cage newel staircase, after which it is named, is that each of its newel posts extends throughout the full height of the staircase, the four posts and the banisters thus forming a stairwell which is not fully enclosed, but rather contained within a cage-like structure. In fact, at Staircase House, at some date before the first surviving descriptions of the staircase in the 19th century, the newel posts were each sawn through, just below the stringer board and just above the handrail. That may have been done as a response to changing tastes, or possibly to overcome the practical difficulties of moving large objects, such as furniture, about the house.
In its later years in private ownership, the House was used partly as the Staircase Café until 1989, and into the 1990s as storage for Gardner's Green Grocery and Fruit stall which stood in the market, immediately in front of the House itself.
The House, including the staircase, was painstaking restored using traditional materials, tools and techniques, following a major fire in 1995, the second of two arson attacks on the semi-derelict building. The restoration was undertaken by
Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council
Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council is the local authority for the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport, Greater Manchester, England. The council is currently run by a Liberal Democrat minority administration. At the 2022 local elections, the ...
, after having
compulsorily purchased the property, following a long and persistent campaign to save it by a local conservation group, the
Stockport Heritage Trust, beginning in 1987.
The Trust, local volunteers, argued that the House was a unique survival and should be preserved and, on that basis, it dissuaded the council from demolishing the building as a dangerous structure as had been previously proposed. Stockport Heritage Trust financed tree-ring dating establishing the date of the earliest remaining parts of the House as 1460. They commissioned the first measured architectural survey of the building and were successful in pressing for it to be upgraded officially from a Grade 2 to a Grade 2* listed building.
Now open to the public, Staircase House offers a unique glimpse into the life of mediæval and renaissance Stockport, the origins of the town, its status as a
borough
A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely.
History
In the Middle A ...
and a
market town
A market town is a settlement most common in Europe that obtained by custom or royal charter, in the Middle Ages, a market right, which allowed it to host a regular market; this distinguished it from a village or city. In Britain, small rural ...
, and the subsequent stages of the House's development until the 1940s, when it was last used as a private dwelling.
See also
*
Grade II* listed buildings in Greater Manchester
There are 236 Grade II* listed buildings in Greater Manchester, England. In the United Kingdom, the term listed building refers to a building or other structure officially designated as being of special architectural, historical or cultural ...
*
Listed buildings in Stockport
Stockport is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport, Greater Manchester, England. The town, including the areas of Heaton Moor, Heaton Mersey, Heaton Chapel, and Reddish, contains 139 listed buildings that are recorded in the Nationa ...
References
External links
- Official site at Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council
{{Buildings and structures in Stockport Borough
Buildings and structures in Stockport
Grade II* listed buildings in Greater Manchester
Houses in Greater Manchester
Historic house museums in Greater Manchester
Tourist attractions in the Metropolitan Borough of Stockport