Built for Richard Churche, a wealthy Nantwich merchant, and his wife, it remained in their family until the 20th century. In 1930, it was rescued from being shipped to the USA by Edgar Myott and his wife, who began restoration work. As well as a dwelling, the mansion has been used as a school, restaurant, shop, and granary and hay store.
The building has four gables to the front; the upper storey and the attics all overhang with jetties. The upper storeys feature decorative panels, and the exterior has many gilded carvings. The principal rooms have oak panelling, some of which is Elizabethan in date. Nikolaus Pevsner considered Churche's Mansion to be among the best timber-framed Elizabethan buildings in Cheshire, describing it as "an outstanding piece of decorated half-timber architecture".
Dickinson was born in Macclesfield to an unmarried mother, Eugenie Gulessarian. Eugenie was a member of Armenian textile trading family, whose father had moved from Istanbul to Manchester, England in 1904. Eugenie is also noted as being a gypsy who collected many antiques which sparked David's love for the industry. Dickinson had corresponded with his biological mother in her later life in Jersey, but they never met. Dickinson's biological father is unknown.
David was adopted by the Dickinsons, a local couple. Mr. Dickinson died when David was 12, and as his adoptive mother worked hard to keep the family together, David was in part brought up by his French grandmother. Dickinson began an apprenticeship at an aircraft factory when he was 14, but quickly left to work in the cloth trade in central Manchester. At 19 Dickinson served four years in prison, the majority spent at Strangeways in Manchester, for fraud.
Image 24Ineos ChlorVinyls at Runcorn in 2006; the UK chemicals industry is worth £57bn, with 180,000 people in around 3,000 companies (from North West England)
Image 29Old meets new at the Stockport Viaduct; designed by George W. Buck, it is the largest free-standing brick structure in the UK, built in 1840 when it was the largest viaduct in the world; it features in many L. S. Lowry paintings. (from North West England)
Image 32Kelloggs in Manchester, looking north along the A5181 next to GMFRS's Stretford Area Command HQ; the site is the largest producer of cereals in Europe (from North West England)
Image 34A Hawker Siddeley Nimrod MR2 (HS 801), built at Woodford (former Avro) and designed in Manchester in the mid-1960s, with XV148 (former Comet 4C) making its first flight on 23 May 1967, flying from Chester (Broughton, which had built many de Havilland fighter jet aircraft) to Woodford; 49 Nimrods were made for the RAF, entering service with 201 Sqn on 6 November 1970, serving until March 2010 with 38 Sqn (from North West England)
Image 42Former head office of the Girobank in Bootle; it closed in 2003; it was taken over by Alliance & Leicester in 1990; it was established in Bootle in the late 1960s with help from Hugh Baird; it was the first financial institution in Europe to be fully computerised from the start (from North West England)
Image 52Vauxhall's plant in Ellesmere Port exports 88% of its cars, although many of the components are imported, and has made over 5 million since 1962, also making the Vectra from 1995 to 2008; it makes 686 a day (two a minute, 100,000 a year) and the latest model was designed by Mark Adams and Malcolm Ward. Three million Astras have been sold in the UK since 1979, and featured on the Top Gear test track until 2015; the production is split with the Opel Manufacturing Poland site at Gliwice in southern Poland; the Corsa is made at Opel Zaragoza in north-east Spain, with 3-door versions at Opel Eisenach; the Insignia is made at Opel Rüsselsheim (from North West England)
...that the 1673 history of Cheshire by Sir Peter Leycester questioned Amicia Mainwaring's legitimacy, leading to a "paper war" of 15 pamphlets with the Mainwaring family?