The Citadel

The Citadel is a dower house built between 1824 and 1825 by Thomas Harrison of Chester, located on the site of a late 18th-century building. It was commissioned for Sir Rowland Hill, the fourth baronet of Hawkstone, for the use of his mother and her sister-in-law, Jane Hill. The structure is made of red sandstone ashlar and features slate roofs that are concealed by crenellated parapets, showcasing a Gothic Revival Castle style.

The building's plan consists of three circular bastions arranged around a central octagon, with two castellated walls set at 45-degree angles to the rear. It has two storeys, with a continuous chamfered string course and false machicolations on the bastions, as well as mock gun-loops. The windows throughout are wooden, with mullioned and transomed designs. The ground floor windows and those on both floors of the bastions have plain labels, while the centre window of the middle bastion and the inner windows of the outer bastions on the first floor feature 4-centred arches.

Access is through a shallow embattled porch leading to the centre bastion, which has a 4-centred arch and a 20th-century Gothic traceried door. At the rear of the centre bastion, there is an octagonal spiral stair turret projection, and the outer bastions have red brick stacks with four attached octagonal stone shafts. The walls at the rear, angled at 45 degrees and topped with an embattled parapet, have stepped buttresses with gabled caps that conceal late 19th-century red brick additions.

Inside, the main features on the ground floor include an original open-well staircase with Gothic tracery on the cast-iron balustrade, plain open string, and dado panelling. The fireplaces, particularly the one in the dining room, are in the Perpendicular style, featuring a segmental arch and trefoil decoration on the spandrels. Most ceilings have plaster ribs and foliated bosses, except for the dining room, which is coffered and adorned with elaborate plasterwork. The interior also includes panelled doors and window shutters.