Willoughbridge Lodge

Willoughbridge Lodge is a former hunting lodge that has been converted into a farmhouse. Originally built for the Gerard family in the mid-16th century, it was extended in the late 16th century with further additions and alterations mainly from the early to mid-19th century. The building is constructed of dressed sandstone rubble with ashlar dressings, and features a range of 19th-century red brick additions with plain tiled roofs.

The oldest part of the lodge is a square tower flanked by gabled wings. There are two front gabled wings that are set at right angles to the tower, and long parallel 19th-century additions at the rear. The tower consists of three stages above a cellar, with moulded string courses separating the second and third stages. It has two stepped buttresses at the front corners and an embattled parapet, which has been partly renewed. A rectangular stair turret projects to the right, topped with a scale-patterned ogee cap and a globe finial. The tower features two three-light mullioned windows on the second and third stages, and two single-light openings with dripstones on either side of a flat-headed doorway, which also has a dripstone and a 19th-century iron-studded door.

The flanking two-storeyed wings each have one bay, with the front wings having better-dressed masonry. They include three-light mullioned windows with dripstones and coped stone verges at the gables, although the globe finials are now on the ground nearby. A sandstone ridge stack is located on the left-hand front wing, below which is an engraved stone commemorating the Great Cattle Plague of 1866. The two-storeyed ranges at the rear are at right angles to the main structure; the right-hand one is made of stone and is likely slightly older than the left-hand one, which is of red brick, both featuring mid-20th-century casements.

A buttressed sandstone revetment wall to the north protects the terraced hill on which the lodge stands, offering magnificent views across the Cheshire Plain.