Rode Hall and Gardens in Stoke-on-Trent

Join us on a brief yet fascinating journey into the history of Rode Hall, one of Cheshire's most exquisite country houses. Discover more about its rich heritage and how the Baker Wilbraham family who have owned it for approaching three hundred and fifty years have contended with the challenges of social change and architectural trends through to its ongoing conservation and restoration today.

Enjoy a whistle-stop tour of the highs and lows of the house and how one family have ensured its safe upkeep and place in the community over the years. Today, it is enjoyed by families from far and wide who come to enjoy the house and splendid gardens, fantastic events including the monthly farmers' market and a welcome treat in the delightful tearooms.

When Roger Wilbraham (1623 -1707) purchased the Rode estate for £2,400 in 1669, its manor-house was probably half-timbered, like nearby Little Moreton Hall. Today, nothing remains of that original building. Instead stands a fine, redbrick, Georgian country house: Rode Hall. On approaching, it becomes apparent that this handsome home is, in effect, two houses in one, and that the substantial, porticoed building is a later second house attached to a smaller, now wisteria-clad, first house.

Rode’s Grade II listed park and gardens are amongst the finest in Cheshire. A seventeenth-century survey described ‘orchards, gardens and courts within the Greene before ye hall’ but there are no further records of the grounds until 1790 when Richard Wilbraham Bootle commissioned a ‘Red Book’ from the landscape gardener Humphry Repton (1752 – 1818).

For more information, visit the website.