Peckforton Castle

Peckforton Castle was built between 1844 and 1850 for John Tollemache, at that time the largest landowner in Cheshire and a man William Ewart Gladstone called "the greatest estate manager of his day". Tollemache's first choice of architect was George Latham of Nantwich, who was never appointed and took £2,000 in compensation. The commission went instead to Anthony Salvin, who carried the greater reputation and more experience, and who had already worked on the Tollemache manor house at Helmingham Hall in Suffolk.

Dean and Son of Leftwich did the building, with Joseph Cookson of Tarporley as clerk of works. The stone came from a quarry a mile to the west, and a railway was laid to carry it to the site. The finished house cost £60,000.

What Salvin delivered was a family home laid out as a medieval fortress: a gatehouse, a portcullis, a dry moat, large towers, and external windows little more than arrow slots. The Illustrated London News decided in 1851 that it "seems to exhibit the peculiar beauties of Carnarvon Castle without its inconveniences".

Sir George Gilbert Scott, writing in 1858, managed admiration and exasperation in the same breath: "the largest and most carefully and learnedly executed Gothic mansion of the present", and also "the very height of masquerading". It is regarded as the last serious fortified home built in England, executed to the highest standards and one of the great buildings of its age.

Quite why a Victorian landowner should want a more or less complete medieval castle has been debated. Tollemache was a formidable manager of land but was also perceived as "a man of considerable eccentricity". Jill Allibone has suggested he was insuring himself against the political temper of the time: behind a defensible wall a family might sit out a revolution coming from Manchester or Liverpool. A plainer possibility is the weather, a heavy stone house rather than an Italianate villa giving shelter from what the Cheshire plain could throw at it.

Durdey concludes that the decisive factors were simpler still. Tollemache had a vast inheritance to spend, and wanted a house that was impressive, dominant, and suitable for Cheshire's greatest landowner.

Wilbraham Tollemache, 2nd Baron Tollemache, fitted central heating and electric light before moving in during the 1890s. In 1922 a large afforestation scheme began on the Peckforton Hills, and the woodland it produced has since been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest. His grandson Bentley Tollemache, 3rd Baron, left the castle with his family at the outbreak of war in 1939.

For the duration it served as a hostel for physically handicapped children evacuated from the London area. Bentley Tollemache died in 1955 without sons, and the estate passed to his cousin John Tollemache. From 1969 to 1980 the castle was leased to an American, George W. Barrett, and closed again as a private house.

Through the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s the castle earned its keep on film. The Doctor Who serial The Time Warrior was shot there for broadcast in 1973–74, and a 1991 Robin Hood starring Patrick Bergin and Uma Thurman used it too. From 1982 to 1986 it hosted Treasure Trap, one of the world's first live action role-playing games.

In 1988 Evelyn Graybill, another American, bought it for £1 million, renovated most of the building and secured planning permission to convert it into a hotel. A member of the Naylor family was married there in 2006 and the family then bought the place, expanding its use to weddings, conferences and other functions. In June 2011 a fire during a wedding caused damage put at around £6 million; that December the bridegroom admitted a charge of arson.