Mow Cop Castle England, UK

Listed Building Description

Text courtesy of Historic England. © Crown Copyright, reprinted under the Open Government License.

ODD RODE C.P. (Off) HIGH STREET SJ 85 NE (MOW COP)

8/83 Mow Cop Castle (formerly listed as Summer 6.6.5? House on Mow Cop)

GV II

Ruinous folly built as a summer house. 1754. By Randle Wilbraham. Coursed sandstone rubble. Round tower to north with ground floor and ruinous upper floor and arch and broken walling to south. Cheshire front: round tower at left with two porthole windows to the ground floor. Row of corbels above this and one pointed arch at left. To right of the tower is a pointed arch and at right again a further piece of ruinous walling with a low porthole window and half of a blocked pointed arch. The Staffordshire side has a porthole window at right of the round tower and a pointed arched doorway at left, a row of corbels dividing the floors and two pointed arches to the first floor with a corbel table below the parapet. Pointed arch to left of this and rectangular surround to the sunken porthole window in the walling at left. The round tower was originally less ruinous and had Y-tracery to the pointed windows and a conical roof, and served as a summer-house for the Wilbrahams and a neighbouring family of Staffordshire landowners. In the late C18 the first meetings of the Primitive Methodists were held below the castle. The castle was built on the county boundary and one half falls within the civil parish of Kidsgrove, Staffordshire (q.v.).

Listing NGR: SJ8574857354