Alderley Park
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Alderley Park was a country estate at
Nether Alderley Nether Alderley is a village and civil parish in Cheshire, England, on the A34 a mile and a half south of Alderley Edge. The civil parish includes the hamlets of Monk's Heath and Soss Moss. At Monk's Heath crossroads, the A34 crosses the A537 ...
,
Cheshire Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's county tow ...
, England, between
Macclesfield Macclesfield is a market town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. It is located on the River Bollin in the east of the county, on the edge of the Cheshire Plain, with Macclesfield Forest to its eas ...
and
Knutsford Knutsford () is a market town in the borough of Cheshire East, in Cheshire, England. Knutsford is south-west of Manchester, north-west of Macclesfield and 12.5 miles (20 km) south-east of Warrington. The population at the 2011 Census was ...
. It was the residence of the Stanley family of Alderley from the 1500s. It became the headquarters of ICI Pharmaceuticals in the 1950s. It was purchased from
AstraZeneca AstraZeneca plc () is a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with its headquarters at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in Cambridge, England. It has a portfolio of products for major diseases in areas includi ...
by Bruntwood in 2014. The site has an international reputation as a home for bio and life sciences. The Aldlerley New Hall was constructed in brick with a stone facade for Baroness Maria and John, 7th Baronet (later 1st Baron) Stanley. Building started in 1818 on a site in the south of the park. In 1931, the house was severely damaged by fire and left empty for nearly twenty years until converted in 1950 by
Imperial Chemical Industries Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) was a British chemical company. It was, for much of its history, the largest manufacturer in Britain. It was formed by the merger of four leading British chemical companies in 1926. Its headquarters were at ...
(ICI) to serve as the base for their new pharmaceutical division. The gardens and some outbuildings have been preserved and many thousands of trees planted.


History

The manor of Over Alderley came into the Stanley family when heiress Elizabeth Weever married John Stanley, a brother of the Earl of Derby. In the 1580s John Stanley's descendant, Thomas Stanley, built a mansion house on a moated site near the
mill Mill may refer to: Science and technology * * Mill (grinding) * Milling (machining) * Millwork * Textile mill * Steel mill, a factory for the manufacture of steel * List of types of mill * Mill, the arithmetic unit of the Analytical Engine early ...
at Nether Alderley. Thomas died in 1591. The adjacent manor of Nether Alderley had been confiscated by the crown in 1508 from the estate of Sir William Stanley after his conviction and execution for supporting
Perkin Warbeck Perkin Warbeck ( 1474 – 23 November 1499) was a pretender to the English throne claiming to be Richard of Shrewsbury, Duke of York, who was the second son of Edward IV and one of the so-called " Princes in the Tower". Richard, were he alive ...
. It was sold in 1556 to Sir Edward Fitton of Gawsworth who sold it on for £2000 to Thomas Stanley, jnr in 1602. Thomas was knighted by King James in 1603. The Stanley family subsequently occupied the hall for around two hundred years until it was severely damaged by fire in 1779; part of the old hall survives, dating from the 17th century. The correspondent Hon. Maria Josepha and the explorer
John Stanley, 1st Baron Stanley of Alderley John Thomas Stanley, 1st Baron Stanley of Alderley (26 November 1766 – 23 October 1850), known as Sir John Stanley, 7th Baronet, from 1807 to 1839, was a British peer and politician. Life Stanley was the son of Sir John Thomas Stanley FRSE (17 ...
, married in 1796. They lived here for fifty years and there were 11 children of the marriage, with sons who were twins and seven daughters surviving to become adults. The 7th Baronet and Baroness had commissioned a new hall to be constructed in 1818, in the south of the estate on a site then occupied by Park House. The new house grew to a size of sixty bedrooms and six entertaining rooms, of which only one room, with its oak panelling and coats of arms intact, remains. Behind the house a walled garden and a water garden were created and the mill pond enlarged. The new hall was occupied by further generations of the Stanley family until 1931, when it too was damaged by fire during the occupation of The 6th Baron Stanley of Alderley, and had to be partially demolished and left unoccupied. The sixth Lord's finances had suffered from the effects of two expensive divorces, gambling losses and death duties, and in 1938 he decided to sell the estate piecemeal, involving the disposal of 77 farms and 166 houses. No offers were received for the hall itself and it stood empty for nearly twenty years. The 4th Baron Stanley of Alderley hosted the Prime Minister
H. H. Asquith Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, (12 September 1852 – 15 February 1928), generally known as H. H. Asquith, was a British statesman and Liberal Party politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom ...
and his cabinet minister,
Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 during the Second World War, and again from ...
, at Alderley Park in the early 1900s. Churchill planted a sweet chestnut tree near the Tenant's Hall, known since as the Churchill Tree.


Structure

The site is north-east of the Monk's Heath Crossroads between the A537 and A34. Before the M6 opened in the early 1960s, the A34 was the main thoroughfare to the north-west. The ICI site was accessed to the west from the former A34; the A34
Alderley Edge Alderley Edge is a village and civil parish in Cheshire, England. In 2011, it had a population of 4,780. Alderley Edge is northwest of Macclesfield and south of Manchester, at the base of a steep and thickly wooded sandstone escarpment, Alder ...
Bypass opened on 19 November 2010.


Business use


ICI

In 1950 the dilapidated hall and of surrounding parkland were purchased, with planning permission to develop, by ICI Pharmaceuticals for £55,000. Work began in 1957 on a site by Radnor Mere (the enlarged mill pond) to provide office and laboratory facilities, initially for ICI and latterly for AstraZeneca (after ICI Pharmaceuticals became Zeneca Pharmaceuticals in 1993), and which came to house some 3,500 staff. It became a global lead centre for cancer research and a number of anti-cancer treatments were developed at the site including
Nolvadex Tamoxifen, sold under the brand name Nolvadex among others, is a selective estrogen receptor modulator used to prevent breast cancer in women and treat breast cancer in women and men. It is also being studied for other types of cancer. It has ...
,
Zoladex Goserelin, sold under the brand name Zoladex among others, is a medication which is used to suppress production of the sex hormones (testosterone and estrogen), particularly in the treatment of breast and prostate cancer. It is an injectable gona ...
,
Casodex Bicalutamide, sold under the brand name Casodex among others, is an antiandrogen medication that is primarily used to treat prostate cancer. It is typically used together with a gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) analogue or surgical remov ...
,
Arimidex Anastrozole, sold under the brand name Arimidex among others, is a medication used in addition to other treatments for breast cancer. Specifically it is used for hormone receptor-positive breast cancer. It has also been used to prevent breast ca ...
and
Iressa Gefitinib, sold under the brand name Iressa, is a medication used for certain breast, lung and other cancers. Gefitinib is an EGFR inhibitor, like erlotinib, which interrupts signaling through the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) in targe ...
. The ground-breaking anaesthetic Diprivan was discovered in the laboratories in 1973. In 1963 a new Alderley House was built as the commercial headquarters (and was demolished in 2015). Work on the latest modification of the Alderley Old Hall began in 1963, and incorporates a surviving part of the previous buildings. Originally the Tenant's Hall (and used a hospital in the Great War), this building is now named the Sir James Black Conference Centre in honour of the
Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
-winning discoverer of beta-blockers. The gardens and the woodlands have been restored and the nearby Grade II listed Home Farm buildings preserved. The latter includes coach-houses, cottages and barns of hand-made English orange brick and a six-sided columbarium or dovecote.


AstraZeneca

In March 2013,
AstraZeneca AstraZeneca plc () is a British-Swedish multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with its headquarters at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in Cambridge, England. It has a portfolio of products for major diseases in areas includi ...
announced plans to cease R&D work at Alderley Park. A total of 1,600 jobs were to be relocated over three years, mainly to
Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
, but the company planned to continue non-R&D work at the site. In March 2014, Alderley Park was purchased by Manchester Science Parks – a partnership between Manchester's academic centres and local councils, and investment company Bruntwood.


Redevelopment

In February 2016, planning consent was granted for a £160m masterplan to re-develop the Park which will include significant investment into re-purposing the bioscience campus to one of multiple occupancy, up to 275 homes, a farm shop, village shop, gastropub and new leisure facilities. Construction of the first two phases of houses by PH Homes and PJ Livesey commenced in 2017.
Robert Adam Robert Adam (3 July 17283 March 1792) was a British neoclassical architect, interior designer and furniture designer. He was the son of William Adam (1689–1748), Scotland's foremost architect of the time, and trained under him. With his ...
, one of the architects for PH Homes' Alderley Park development, was awarded the 2017
Driehaus Architecture Prize The Driehaus Architecture Prize, fully named The Richard H. Driehaus Prize at the University of Notre Dame, is a global award to honor a major contributor in the field of contemporary traditional and classical architecture. The Driehaus Prize was ...
at the
University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin founded the school in 1842. The main c ...
, the highest value architecture award in the world. As of 2017, over 150 companies are based at Alderley Park, including Royal London, the Medicines Discovery
Catapult A catapult is a ballistic device used to launch a projectile a great distance without the aid of gunpowder or other propellants – particularly various types of ancient and medieval siege engines. A catapult uses the sudden release of stor ...
and the AMR Centre.


See also

*
Listed buildings in Nether Alderley Nether Alderley is a civil parish in Cheshire East, England. It contains 56 buildings that are recorded in the National Heritage List for England as designated listed buildings. Of these, one is listed at Grade I, the highest grade, ...


References


Further reading

* * * *Hill, George B. ''Alderley Park Discovered'' Carnegie Publishing 2016


External links

*
Parklands, Alderley Park
at bruntwood.co.uk {{Authority control AstraZeneca Borough of Cheshire East Country houses in Cheshire Imperial Chemical Industries Pharmaceutical industry in the United Kingdom Pharmaceutical research institutes Research institutes established in 1958 Research institutes in Cheshire Science parks in the United Kingdom 1958 establishments in England