Interesting project for someone brave enough to take it on?

[robgil]

I dont have enough furniture polish for it.

http://www.churchesmansion.com/mansion_interior.html

 

[Feltwell]

I know Churches Mansion well, having gone to school in Nantwich. Lovely building, not a great location though - right next to a roundabout on a fairly busy road. It's been inhabited by many businesses in the time I've known it, all of which seem to have gone bust! It's not in a great location for a business, it's on the outskirts of town so all the tourists are less likely to find it - despite it only being a maximum 10 minute walk from the town centre. I'm not sure there's any parking there either, I can't remember.

Nantwich by the way is a lovely little town and well worth a visit if you're ever up that way - lots of timber framed buildings in and around the town centre. Don't bother making the short trip to Crewe whilst you're there though. :wink:

 

[LadyArowana]

It's been inhabited by many businesses in the time I've known it, all of which seem to have gone bust! It's not in a great location for a business, it's on the outskirts of town so all the tourists are less likely to find it -

Selling antiques now, wonder if anyone here would like this for the top of a chicken coop

 

[Moo]

What a glorious place!
Any idea how much they're asking for it?

 

[Feltwell]

[selling antiques now, wonder if anyone here would like this for the top of a chicken coop

Don't tempt her! I reckon Joce's got more than enough already planned to spend her money on! :wink:

Churches Mansion was a restaurant for years and years - but one with frequently changing owners, all of whom seem to leave poorer than when they arrived.

It is a beautiful building though, no denying that.

 

[LadyArowana]

...........................................all of whom seem to leave poorer than when they arrived.

That seems to be a theme common to many historic properties.

 

[Feltwell]

Very true - but in this case it also had much to do with it's inherent lack of suitability as a restaurant. That is the problem with it really - it's a beautiful building, but what do you do with it?

If you're spending that kind of money on a private house then you wouldn't want it to be facing onto a main road and a roundabout (it is VERY close). From the front rooms you would have had a beautiful view of a Shell petrol station, although I think that's gone now and has been replaced by a vetenary hospital.

For a business, you've got to generate enough profit over and above what most businesses generate just to keep the building maintained - which means that whilst you've got this beautiful building to draw people in, you'll also be likely to be very expensive. Plus, of course, you can't just knock it about internally to make it suitable for whatever your business is, you have to work around the building. Tourists do come to Nantwich as it is a very pretty little town, but to get to this building means walking from the town centre along a busy, narrow road with narrow pavements.

Edit - just checked Google Streetview, the petrol station has gone which is something! Have a look on there and you'll see what I mean about it's location.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&s...=h5GxX0yWsuHy90SDZO9TWQ&cbp=12,166.38,,0,1.64

 

[Moo]

If you're spending that kind of money ......

Er - what exactly is 'that kind of money'?

 

[Feltwell]

Sorry Moo, I don't know, but I think that when it was last on the market (about 10 years ago) it was at £1.5 million. That is relying on my memory however, not the best thing to do!

 

[Feltwell]

I've just remembered one particular, unusual feature of the house.

In one of the upstairs rooms there are some floorboards that are hinged, reputedly to allow coffins to be passed down to the ground floor below! The house has a narrow spiral staircase which coffins won't fit down easily.

 

[Penners]

In one of the upstairs rooms there are some floorboards that are hinged, reputedly to allow coffins to be passed down to the ground floor below! The house has a narrow spiral staircase which coffins won't fit down easily.

My first listed fixer-upper (almost derelict) had a very old, very rotten and very narrow dogleg staircase, which still had three 15th-century sold oak treads in it. The rest of it had spent several hundred years acting as breakfast to generations of anobium punctatum and would have collapsed under the weight of a largish feather.

The CO told us the staircase had to stay. The Buildings Inspector said it had to go and be replaced with something that we could get a coffin down. I told him that, if it came to it, I'd be happy for my mortal remains to be chucked out of the window, but he was having none of it.

After months of wrangling, I built a new staircase over the top of the old one, sacrificing a fair bit of upstairs floor space into the bargain. Thankfully, I never found out whether a coffin could have descended my staircase.

 

[CatherineB]

The Buildings Inspector said it had to go and be replaced with something that we could get a coffin down. .

:lol: For the sake of the H&S of the corpse, I presume... :roll:

 

[robgil]

What happens if you die downstairs? or in the garden?

 

[Feltwell]

What happens if you die downstairs? or in the garden?

The funeral director gives you a discount. :wink:

 

[Gareth Hughes]

The Buildings Inspector said it had to go and be replaced with something that we could get a coffin down. .

:lol: For the sake of the H&S of the corpse, I presume... :roll:

Betj wrote:

Remove those cottages, a huddled throng!
Too many babies have been born in there,
Too many coffins, bumping down the stair,
Carried the old their garden paths along.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Oh, lovely, lovely Betj.

What a beautiful building! Roll on global warming, and the banning of the car, so that these gorgeous properties can have dirt tracks in front of them again.

 

[JoceAndChris]

It's been inhabited by many businesses in the time I've known it, all of which seem to have gone bust! It's not in a great location for a business, it's on the outskirts of town so all the tourists are less likely to find it -

Selling antiques now, wonder if anyone here would like this for the top of a chicken coop

:lol: yes please.

 

[Penners]

Deeming that I was due to die
I framed myself a coffin;
So full of graveyard zeal was I,
I set the folks a-laughing.
I made it snugly to my fit,
My joinering was honest;
And sometimes in it I would sit,
And fancy I was non est.

I'll spare you the rest of it...

 

[worms]

Or...

There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: “You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it’s up to you to cremate those last remains.”

 

[Penners]

Ah yes - poor old Sam. He didn't fare as well as Debbie, did he?