Its setting is sublime, its 950-year history as rich as any English country house, and the restoration work carried out on it in the last 30 years exceptional. Combermere Abbey, on the Cheshire/Shropshire border, is a splendid monument to the past but equally importantly a vibrant venue for the 21st century, a place to visit, to stay – and to marry.
Arriving is an event in itself, a mile-long drive wending your way through rolling parkland full of majestic ancient trees, where cattle contentedly graze in the surrounding fields from the spring onwards. Then the stately white Grade I listed building comes into view, a Tudor manor house with a distinctive Gothic facade, and behind it a glorious expansive mere (or lake), from which the original abbey took its name.
In another age England’s most famous man of letters experienced a similar sense of wonderment when he was a guest at Combermere. ‘We have been treated with great civility’, wrote Dr Samuel Johnson in his diary on 26 July 1774, ‘it is the best house that I ever saw of that kind (referring to its part timber, part stone structure)’. A boating expedition on the mere clearly pleased him too, during which he reached ‘a small island, on which there is a summer house, shaded with great trees: some were hollow, and have seats in their trunks’.
Combermere Abbey Accommodation
Following in the great essayist’s footsteps, we had come to spend three nights at the Combermere estate, one of them in the North Wing of the main house, and two in one of the nine restored Combermere Abbey cottages that were once the stables and coach house. It works on a bed and breakfast basis, but the options for dinner are plentiful in the many characterful local pubs and restaurants, as we would soon discover.
Settling first into our comfortable self-catering cottage, named Empress, gave us our first glimpse into Combermere Abbey’s extraordinary history. For a start the cottage takes its name from one of the many colourful characters who have inhabited these grounds over the centuries – Empress Elisabeth of Austria, who rented Combermere for two seasons in the 1880s, indulging her passion for hunting.
Such is the remarkable life story of this beautiful, artistic, independent yet troubled woman, married to Emperor Franz Joseph aged just 16, that Netflix has made not one but two series about her. And as we gazed out from our cottage sitting room towards the cobbled courtyard, we could imagine a busy scene back in 1881 as the hunt returned, with the clattering of hooves, the excited snorting of the animals, the encouraging voices of the grooms as ‘Sissi’ (as the Empress was known) slid easily (she always rode side saddle despite the dangers) and elegantly from her mount.
A delightful historical touch in the Empress is the reclaimed stable divider that separates the sitting room from the kitchen. The cottage is a clever amalgam of the traditional and the modern, with original beams, some classic dark wooded furniture in the master bedroom together with a comfortable rich blue sofa and art deco lamps in the sitting room.
In the spacious main bedroom interesting Victorian prints adorn the walls, while a decorative pelmet overlooks an extremely comfortable Queen-sized bed, which has decent reading lamps on either side. There’s a second, equally stylish twin-bedded attic bedroom reached via a winding staircase at the end of the sitting room.
The sitting-room/kitchen area is extremely light-filled through the tall windows looking onto the courtyard, and spacious too with a large dining table included in the left-hand corner. We wanted to enjoy the cottage in our limited time, so we elected to stay in on one of our three nights and watch TV (our football team was playing in a big FA Cup match) in front of the wood-burning stove, eating from a ‘grazing’ tray prepared by house manager Stephan, replete with delicious meats and cheeses.
Combermere Abbey History
As the name suggests, Combermere Abbey was originally – built back in the 1130s – a monastery, housing a Cistercian order of monks. For the following four centuries it had something of a chequered life, often in dispute with its lay neighbours, and frequently taken into royal custody.
Then came the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1538 when Combermere was stripped of its status and its riches – one legend has it that the departing monks threw their gold and silver into the mere to hide them from the tax collectors.
King Henry VIII gifted the 22,000-acre estate to one of his favourites, Sir George Cotton, and he promptly demolished the church and most of the buildings, converting part of the abbey into the country house that it remains to this day. The Gothic changes were introduced between 1814 and 1821 by the most illustrious of the Cotton dynasty, Sir Stapleton Cotton, later made Viscount Combermere, who was one of the Duke of Wellington’s most brilliant and trusted generals.
After a somewhat fallow period brought on by the new Viscount’s profligacy (he had a reputation as a national hero to uphold and felt a grand lifestyle was essential), it was eventually bought in 1919 by Sir Kenneth Crossley, the Manchester bus, aeroplane and car manufacturer whose military vehicles played such a vital role in World War One. And unusually for the fate of very many English country houses over the next century, Combermere Abbey still remains in the Crossley family today, owned and run by Sir Kenneth’s great granddaughter Sarah Callander Beckett and her family.
Combermere Abbey Weddings
Sarah is passionate about this, her childhood home, where she and her family still live, and all her hard work in restoring Combermere Abbey to its former glory is evident in its thriving constituent parts. She breathed new life into the magnificent but dilapidated old stables by transforming them into elegant, comfortable self-catering cottages. Then a request by two old friends to get married in the old abbey building led to the granting of a licence, and the start of a fledging wedding business, just as country house-party-style marriages were becoming the rage. Both projects, of course, have introduced vital new income streams. Today Combermere Abbey hosts some 60 weddings a year, and can conveniently host 49 people on site.
Combermere Abbey Gardens
The great outdoors at Combermere is as much an attraction as its historic buildings. We took a stroll round the splendid six-acre Victorian walled gardens close to our cottage, each one with an avenue leading to the restored Edwardian Combermere Abbey Glasshouse, a beautiful fan-shaped building where couples now take their vows. Outside it is the lovely Fruit Maze – the only one of its kind in the world – whose abundant gooseberries, redcurrants, apples and pears are turned into jams and chutneys or pressed into juice locally, and form part of the breakfast hampers in the cottages.
Herons and egrets abound on the mere – it is a Site of Special Scientific Interest – and we would catch better sight of these regal birds from our bathroom window in the North Wing later. First we embarked on a tranquil three-mile woodland walk which eventually leads down to the mere, through a landscape of varied attractive flora and fauna. It was just too early in the year for us but the grounds are famous for the stunning Combermere Abbey bluebell walk.
While we revelled in the time spent in our cottage and in the Abbey gardens, we were also keen to explore as much of the surrounding towns and villages as we could during our short stay. Whitchurch, five miles to the south west in Shropshire, was an obvious contender, as was Nantwich, seven miles to the north in Cheshire.
Exploring Whitchurch
Whitchurch is a busy, attractive market town, a mix of medieval timbered and handsome Georgian houses, as famous as anything for its world class tower clock manufacturers J.B.Joyce & Co. One of those clocks sits atop the town’s impressive neoclassical church, St Alkmund’s, which perches at the top of the High Street.
Here, in the Lady Chapel, lies the body of John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, who led the English army to a disastrous defeat at the hands of the French in the Battle of Castillon (1453). Also in this chapel we marvelled at a gem of a painting of The Last Supper, attributed to the renowned Venetian artist Bonifazio Veronese.
Turning off the High Street into the Watergate Arcade, we gazed into the window of Powell’s Pies to see husband and wife team Andrew and Marie Powell hard at work in the kitchen making their product.
It was a delight to see such artisanal skills on show. Four generations of Powells have been making pies in the traditional way, ‘hand raised’ using wooden dollies – some of which date back to Andrew’s father, Edmund, who made the family pies in the 1960s. We came away with three and Roger’s verdict, after demolishing them for lunch in the following week, was that they were up there with the very best he had tasted.
Cheesy Nantwich
Nantwich, which has a host of excellent independent shops, had its foodie treat for us too in the form of The Cheese Shop on Hospital Street. Cheshire is the oldest cheese made in Britain – legend has it that the Romans built the walled city of Chester to control the district where the precious cheese was made.
Enthusiastic co-owner Nick Birchall, who has had the shop since 2020, gave us a fascinating run through of some of his product (he can offer over 150 artisan cheeses, depending on the season) before inviting us to taste some of his favourites. We learned the difference between clothbound cheese, which results in drier, crumblier texture and an earthier flavour, and wax bound, which keeps the moisture and thus has a smoother, milder taste. Naturally we departed with a selection, which had to include John Bourne’s (wax bound) Cheshire.
Audlem and the Shropshire Union Canal
Our third destination was the pretty village of Audlem, five miles east of Combermere. Mentioned in the Domesday Book, ravaged by the Black Death and the scene of a famous English Civil War skirmish, Audlem has withstood all the vagaries of British life for nigh on 1000 years. But perhaps its greatest claim to fame is its location along Thomas Telford’s Shropshire Union Canal, with a run of 15 locks which drop 93 feet over one and a half miles.
On a lovely, eve-of-spring day we set off for a walk from Audlem’s Shroppie Fly pub (the fastest boats on the canal system in the 18th century were given that sobriquet), passing the brightly coloured moored narrowboats with names such as Rosie Leigh, Emperor, Argonaut and Toby Mory. Mallard ducks coasted contently in the canal water, while a Canada goose, clearly used to rich pickings, honked at us loudly but unsuccessfully for a treat.
Later, as we wandered around the Audlem village, we discovered a newly-opened Thai restaurant, Jan Lek Eatery, which we decided to return to that evening for dinner. It proved a real find, an intimate place (just four or five tables), a family affair run by the son with cooking done by the mother. The Panang curry could not have been bettered anywhere. For our other night out the atmospheric Combermere Arms pub, right on the doorstep of the Abbey, provided tasty food and an excellent local cask beer.
Combermere Abbey North Wing
For our last night at Combermere we moved over to the North Wing of the main house, immaculately restored by Sarah, where there are two suites, the Salamanca and the Bhurtpore – both named after military triumphs (one a battle, the other a siege) of Sir Stapleton Cotton.
In 1820, in a terrific hurry (in only six weeks), Sir Stapleton had a dining-room/ballroom extension to Combermere built in this North Wing, all to make it fit for the visit over Christmas of his great military colleague, the ‘Iron Duke’ and victor of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington. It seems to have been – not surprisingly given the haste – poorly constructed, and problems would linger on well into the 20th century.
Now however, in the 21st century, the renovated North Wing feels fresh and new, the height of luxury and elegance. We stayed in the Salamanca suite, bright, blueish, light and airy, the work of world-renowned designer Nina Campbell clearly showing. We loved the super-king sized bed, while the football pitch-sized ensuite bathroom, with twin basins, walk-in shower and freestanding marble bath, enjoyed spectacular views out over the mere. The sitting-room next door, featuring some lovely antique furniture, was a good place to catch up on some reading.
We enjoyed an excellent cooked breakfast in the downstairs dining-room courtesy of deputy house manager Blair, watched over by the dandyish Sir Stapleton Cotton, resplendent in a painting in his very best military garb. Also on the walls are a collection of beautiful prints of birds, with the name Sharpe on them – perhaps a reference to the great Victorian ornithologist Richard Bowdler Sharpe, who wrote learned monographs on his specialist subject.
During our stay Sarah took us on a guided tour of other parts of the house, the highlight of which was the library – the site of the former Abbot’s Lodgings in the 15th century, and with its still original hammerbeam roof retaining something of a feeling of those times.
Sarah worked on this room between 2011 and 2015, having the ceiling repainted, curtains and carpet cleaned and restoring the fireplace. It had become a library in the 19th century courtesy of Sir Stapleton, with wall to ceiling book shelving (no longer there) and an impressive heraldic display, with 22 shields of the Cotton family, commemorating their marriages (still there). There are a series of portraits on the back wall and, intriguingly, nothing is known about three of the sitters. On the north wall there is an enormous painting, romantic and vainglorious, commissioned by Sir Stapleton to mark his victory against the French at Bhurtpore.
Combermere Abbey Ghost
Here, in this room, lies perhaps the house’s greatest mystery – that of the Combermere Ghost. In December 1891 a visitor to the Abbey, Sybell Corbett, took a photograph of the empty library with a long exposure camera. When the photograph was examined later the figure of the upper body of a man had mysteriously appeared, sitting there in a chair. Spookily, he bore a sharp resemblance to the second Viscount Combermere, whose funeral most of the house were attending that very same afternoon!
Could a servant have dropped in and sat down briefly in the chair? But no servant would have been as well-dressed as the figure in the photograph. The Case of the Combermere Apparition would resurface from time to time over the years and Sherlock Holmes’s creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – always fascinated by these things – had his say. He concluded a piece in the magazine Psychic Science in 1926; ‘My opinion {is} that the ghost theory is far the more probable and that the incident is the best authenticated one of the sort in the history of psychic research’.
So, rich in history and myth, a wonderful place to stay and unwind – Combermere Abbey takes its place at the top table of English country houses.
Combermere Abbey Whitchurch
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