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Mow Cop Castle

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Folly on border of Cheshire and Staffordshire, England

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Mow Cop Castle at sunset

Mow Cop Castle is a folly at Mow Cop in the civil parish of Odd Rode, Cheshire, England. It is designated as a Grade II listed building on the National Heritage List for England. The ridge, upon which the castle sits, forms the boundary between the counties of Cheshire and Staffordshire, the dioceses of Chester and Lichfield and the ecclesiastical provinces of Canterbury and York.

History

Traces of a prehistoric camp have been found here. In 1754, Randle Wilbraham of nearby Rode Hall built an elaborate summerhouse looking like a medieval fortress and round tower.

The area around the castle was nationally famous for the quarrying of high-quality millstones ('querns') for use in water mills. Excavations at Mow Cop have found querns dating back to the Iron Age.

The Castle was given to the National Trust in 1937. That same year over ten thousand Methodists met on the hill to commemorate the first Primitive Methodist camp which met there in 1807.

At the turn of the millennium, on New Year's Eve 1999, Mow Cop was a location for one of the hundreds of flaming beacons across the UK that were lit to welcome the new century.

Though visitors were originally allowed inside the tower of the folly, access is now prevented by a locked metal gate, which still allows views inside the folly.

Mow Cop and its folly are central images in Alan Garner's novel Red Shift.

See also

References

  1. Historic England, "Mow Cop Castle (1162028)", National Heritage List for England, retrieved 3 April 2015
  2. "5 castles in Cheshire that you should visit". Cheshire Life. Newsquest Media Group Ltd. 9 January 2013. Retrieved 9 January 2013.
  3. "Mow Cop Castle, Mow Cop, Staffordshire". Historic England.
  4. Roberts, Owen. "The 'highly improper' story of Mow Cop". My Primitive Methodists. The Methodist Church. Retrieved 15 September 2017.
  5. "Beacons blaze across UK". BBC News. British Broadcasting Corporation. 31 December 1999. Retrieved 21 April 2024.

External links

53°06′47″N 2°12′51″W / 53.1130°N 2.2143°W / 53.1130; -2.2143

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