Little Moreton Hall

En un regard

Le château en bref

Little Moreton Hall is a moated timber-framed Tudor manor house in the parish of Odd Rode, a few kilometres south-west of Congleton. Its black-and-white facades covered with chevron, quatrefoil and quadrant patterns, its jettied gables and its visibly leaning storeys make it one of the most famous timber-framed houses in England. The house was built in stages over almost a century for the Moreton family, from the first years of the 16th century, around a courtyard enclosed on three sides. An inscription below a window of the great hall names William Moreton and the carpenter Richard Dale in 1559. The south wing, added around 1570–1580, contains a long gallery whose very heavy roof contributed to the building's spectacular distortions. Ruined by the Civil War, the family stopped living there and let the manor for more than two centuries. Saved by Elizabeth Moreton at the end of the 19th century, it was given to the National Trust in 1938, which opens it to the public with its knot garden and its still-consecrated chapel.