Portal:Cheshire/Selected article/25

Rode Hall is a grade-II*-listed, Georgian country house in the parish of Odd Rode, near Rode Heath. Built for Randle Wilbraham by 1708, it remains the Wilbraham family seat. Originally two separate houses in red brick with ashlar dressings, the initial seven-bay building, with a central octagonal bellcote and small dome, was joined in the early 1800s to a five-bay building designed by William and David Hiorne in 1752. The interior has an original rococo plaster ceiling by Thomas Farnolls Pritchard, and a dining room remodelled by Lewis Wyatt in around 1808.

The hall is surrounded by parkland and formal gardens, designed by Humphry Repton and landscaped by John Webb in 1803. The grounds include the mile-long Rode Pool, Stew Pond, a grotto, an ice house, an obelisk and a modern Italian garden. Mow Cop Castle, an elaborate Gothic Revival folly, stands two miles from the hall. Dating from 1754, it was also designed by the Hiorne brothers. A camp meeting held there in 1807 is considered to represent the birth of the Primitive Methodist movement.

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