Biddulph Grange Garden is opening free of charge under the Heritage Open Days scheme tomorrow Saturday and Sunday (14 and 15 Aug 2024)
The free entry includes access via the Bateman Walk through the historic St Lawrence’s churchyard and access into Biddulph Grange Country Park via the Wellingtonia Avenue (subject to staffing levels).
The National Trust gardens, which normally charge admission, are open from 10am to 5pm (Bateman walk 11am to 4pm) each day.
People with access issues should note that there is a continual gradient throughout the garden, with 400 steps and tight narrow paths and dark tunnels. The tearoom is up two sets of steps.
The theme of the festival this year is “Routes, Networks and Connections”. To celebrate this, various entrances usually closed to visitors will be opened, exclusively for Heritage Open Days. Visitors can follow in the footsteps of the garden’s creator, James Bateman, and walk the exact route he would take to St Lawrence’s Church via the historic Lime Avenue.
Visitors can also extend their visit to Biddulph Grange Country Park via the Obelisk Walk, connecting the two estates together as they had been back in Bateman’s era.
Visitor experience and operations manager Helen Wilshaw said: “We are thrilled to once again take part in Heritage Open Days. It’s a wonderful opportunity for those who aren’t members of the National Trust to get a taste of what they could experience regularly with a membership. For those who are already members, it’s a chance to bring more of their family friends along with them.”
St Lawrence’s Church itself is holding a fun day on Saturday, from 11am to 4pm.
There will be hotdogs, activities, drinks, cakes, bouncy castles and more besides. All of it is free. The church building will be open for people to explore, with guided tours on offer.
The journey via the Bateman walk is the same path the family would have taken from the grange to church services. There is a long history of St Lawrence’s Church dating back nearly 1,000 years to explore, including the Crusader gravestones. There will be people available in church to answer any questions, and guided tours will be provided.
Astbury
St Mary’s Church, Astbury, will be open between 1pm and 3pm up to 15th September.
Visitors are invited to explore a building that has been a place of worship for more than 1,000 years.
They can discover its history using a self-guided tour, a prayer walk or a children’s trail and find unusual features such as the green man, Winston Churchill and the snails in the windows, or sit quietly and unwind in a sacred space.
Bethesda
Bethesda Methodist Chapel, in Hanley, known as “the cathedral of the Potteries” but which has not hosted a religious service for nearly 40 years is also taking part in the open days scheme.
The chapel was once one of the largest in England, but fell into decay when it shut in the mid-1980s. It is open on Saturday from noon to 3pm.
There is also a chapel open day on Saturday, 9th November, from noon to 2pm. There will be WWI and WWII exhibitions and the organ will be played at intervals. It is of architectural interest, with what is thought to have the largest span outside London when it was built. It had some alterations in its early years as it was expanded twice. In its early days, it had a bank and an infirmary.
Chatterley Whitfield
Chatterley Whitfield Colliery tours are also on offer. As seen on a Lloyds television advert, “Hidden Britain by Drone” and “Abandoned Engineering”, Chatterley Whitfield Colliery closed in 1977 and became a museum. Now it has a heritage centre.
The site is acknowledged to be the most comprehensive surviving example of a deep mine site in England, with a range of surviving structures and buildings unequalled in any other former or surviving coalfield site in Britain.
Not usually open to the public, the free guided tour by Chatterley Whitfield Friends will allow people to appreciate the array of buildings on-site. There are no underground tours.
It is open on Saturday and Sunday, 10am to 4pm. Tours need to be booked via Eventbrite. See heritageopendays.org.uk.
Also open (see heritageopendays.org.uk) are King Edward Street Chapel, Macclesfield, (open Saturday), built in 1690 and one of the oldest and most beautiful buildings in Macclesfield, among the first non-conformist chapels to be built in the UK; “Boats, Trains and Automobiles, getting in and out of Kidsgrove” an entertaining tour of key sites (including the two Harecastle canal tunnel entrances) that have contributed to Kidsgrove’s connectivity, the people who made it happen and the reasons people wanted to come to Kidsgrove (11am to 1pm on Saturday, meet at Kidsgrove Town Hall at 10.50am prompt); The Women’s Line at the Silk Museum, Macclesfield, a snapshot of Macclesfield women’s family trees presenting their female lines artistically through personal mixed media portraits and memories (today, Thursday to Saturday, 10am to 4pm); Macclesfield Town Hall is hosting the Made in Macc craft market, a hobby and community-group fair and sharing information about the history of the building (Saturday 10.30am to 2.30pm).
Heritage Open Days run from 6th to 15th September and is supported by players of the People’s Postcode Lottery and presented by the National Trust.
