Swythamley
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The hamlet of Swythamley lies in a beautiful setting, lying just beyond the Cheshire border on the Staffordshire side of the River Dane.
Swythamley Chapel
Swythamley Hall stands in a fine park and began life as a mediaeval hunting lodge belonging to the Abbey of Dieulacres. The hall was granted to the Traffords by King Henry VIII in 1540 and eventually passed to the Brocklehursts who considerably enlarged and improved the house during the nineteenth century adding new wings and a two storey porch to the west entrance front.
Above Swythamley stands the famous landmark of the Hanging Stone which offers superb views of the surrounding countryside. A precarious rock outcrop on Back Forest Ridge, it bears a plaque to Colonel Henry Courtney Brocklehurst, who died on active service in Burma in 1942. A game warden in the Sudan, on his return to England, Colonel Brocklehurst started a private zoo at Swythamley. During the Second World War, there being no food for them, the animals from the zoo were released into the wild. The wallabies surprisingly survived and bred around the nearby Roaches until the late 1990s.
Nearby places of interest
Lud's Church is an immense natural cleft in the rock on the hillside above Gradbach. The cleft, which is 15 metres high in places and over 100 metres long, has been formed by a landslip which has detached a large section of rock. Over the centuries, Lud's Church has offered shelter to all sorts of fugitives, there are legends that both Robin Hood and Bonnie Prince Charlie used it.
Three Shires Head, is a beauty spot where the three counties of Derbyshire, Cheshire and Staffordshire meet.
Macclesfield Forest, once the centre of a Royal Forest created by the Norman kings for the purpose of hunting game such as deer, wild boar and wolves. It once encompassed all the area from Disley to the River Dane. The forest is home to a herd of red deer, while the reservoirs contain a wide variety of wildfowl.
Shutlingsloe is the third highest peak in the Cheshire (Shining Tor being the highest and Whetstone Ridge the second ) with an elevation of 506 metres (1,660 feet), the summit offers excellent views. On a clear day the mountains of North Wales are visible from its summit.