£1.6m for vitalrestoration of a 'national treasure'

ITS earliest incarnation as a manor house was valued at 5 shillings (5p) in the Domesday Book of 1086.

- NEAL KEELING

By the late 14th century the land owning family, the Davenports, had built a magnificent timber-framed home there.

The family remained lords of the manor for 500 years before it was sold to a Manchester property firm, then a Victorian industrialist and in 1925, to the president of Manchester United, John Henry Davies, for £15,000 (the equivalent of £910,000 now).

Davies lived there until his death in 1927, and his widow Amy remained there until 1935, when she sold it to Hazel Grove and Bramhall Urban District Council for £14,360 (about £1,061,000 now) with the intention that the house and park open to the public. In 1974, Stockport council took it over.