Mow Cop Castle is a Grade II listed building in the Cheshire East local planning authority area, England. First listed on 6 June 1952. Folly, summer house.
Mow Cop Castle
- WRENN ID
- young-chamber-bracken
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Cheshire East
- Constituency
- Stoke-on-Trent North MP: David Williams (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 6 June 1952
- Type
- Folly, summer house
- Address
- Mow Cop Castle, High Street, Odd Rode
- OS grid reference
- SJ 857 573
- Coordinates
- 53.11318, -2.21438
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
Mow Cop Castle is a ruinous folly built as a summer house in 1754 by Randle Wilbraham. It is constructed from coursed sandstone rubble. The structure features a round tower on the north side with a ground floor and a ruinous upper floor, along with an arch and broken walling to the south.
On the Cheshire front, the round tower is located to the left and has two porthole windows on the ground floor. Above this, there is a row of corbels and a pointed arch to the left. To the right of the tower, there is another pointed arch, followed by a section of ruinous walling that includes a low porthole window and half of a blocked pointed arch.
The Staffordshire side has a porthole window to the right of the round tower and a pointed arched doorway to the left. A row of corbels divides the floors, and there are two pointed arches on the first floor, with a corbel table below the parapet. To the left, there is another pointed arch and a rectangular surround to a sunken porthole window in the walling.
Originally, the round tower was less ruinous and featured Y-tracery in the pointed windows and a conical roof. It served as a summer house for the Wilbrahams and a neighboring family of Staffordshire landowners. In the late 18th century, the first meetings of the Primitive Methodists were held below the castle. The castle is situated on the county boundary.
Local climate
Mow Cop Castle receives an average of 910 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 69% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 52% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 45 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 87% of listed buildings. Of these, 25 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
Sign in or create a free account to unlock:
- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
Similar buildings
The closest matches to this building from all 493,000 UK listed buildings, by architecture, period and materials.
this building 1 similar nearby listed buildings