Visitor Information For Great Budworth
Refreshments
George & Dragon High Street Great Budworth (01606 892650). A country pub, right in the heart of the village, serving traditional pub food.
George & Dragon Pub at Great Budworth Cheshire (georgeanddragonatgreatbudworth.co.uk)
Ice Cream Farm Heath Lane, Great Budworth (01606 891211) Real dairy ice cream is made on site in the dairy early each morning. Refreshments available, including light lunches, plus an abundance of toddler toys keep young children happy.
Parish Hall Smithy Lane, Great Budworth
Sunday afternoon tea, coffee and cakes. Open 2-5pm from Easter until October
Buildings of Note
Saint Mary and All Saints Church Great Budworth
The earliest reference to the worshipping community at Great Budworth appears in the Domesday Book of 1086 where we are told of the presence of a priest and so can infer a worshipping community and probably a church building.
Of these early days we can only catch glimpses through “the mists of time” but one point is clear, the Pre-Reformation history of the church is dominated by the Augustinian Canons of Norton Priory, Runcorn.
The Canons were given the church and living of Great Budworth in 1130 by William Fitz Nigel, Constable of Chester. Later they received the gift of a third of all the land in the township of Great Budworth from Geoffrey De Dutton, to add to the already substantial holdings of land they had been given by local people, keen to save their souls and those of their loved ones by endowing the Canons in return for burials and perpetual prayers, a common practice in the middle ages.
St Mary & All Saints | Parish Church of Great Budworth (greatbudworthchurch.co.uk)
Houses
Goldmine House and its attached cottage (Rose Cottage) were designated by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) as a Grade II listed building. They were built in 1870 for Rowland Egerton-Warburton of Arley Hall and were designed by the Chester architect John Douglas. The house faces west and is of brown brick, with some timber framing and clay tile roofs.
Dene Cottages is a pair of cottages, also built for Rowland Egerton-Warburton and designated by DCMS as a Grade II listed building. They were designed by the renowned Chester architect John Douglas and built in 1867-68. The lower storeys are constructed of brown brick. The upper storeys are timber-framed with plaster panels and the roof is in clay tiles. The plaster panels are pargetted with floral motifs.
Belmont Hall, located about a mile outside the village, was built by J. H. Smith-Barry Esq. Built in 1755 and designed by James Gibbs, it is a Grade I listed building. Since 2011 it has been occupied by Cransley School.
George and Dragon pub
The George and Dragon , designated a Grade II listed building, was initially built as a simple three-bay Georgian inn. Dating back in parts to 1722, is a rare example of the quintessential English village pub. In 1875 its restoration was commissioned by Egerton-Warburton and carried out by Chester architect, John Douglas, who added tall rubbed chimneys, mullioned windows and a steep pyramidal turret. The pub has many other features of interest to architectural historians, including a strikingly unusual inn sign located diagonally from the right corner.
54–57 High Street Great Budworth
This is a row of four houses in High Street Cheshire, designated as a Grade II listed building, originally built in the early 18th century – or possibly even earlier. In the early 1870s they were refaced and partly rebuilt for Rowland Egerton-Warburton of Arley Hall by the architect John Douglas. The two outer buildings are houses and the two central buildings are cottages. They are built in brown brick with clay tile roofs, and have two storeys, plus attics. Each building has a gable, those on the outer buildings being larger than those on the inner buildings, and all are decorated with brick and plaster.
This well at the bottom of the High Street used to be the only water supply to the village…
