Wheatsheaf Public House
Location/Address
Church Street, Altrincham
Type
Description
The former Wheatsheaf public house is a large two storey, brick-built, L-shaped complex with cellars and a rear yard. The basement had two rooms, the ground floor 14 room spaces and the first floor 10 room spaces. The eastern Church Street elevation is six bays wide, constructed in brick, now painted white and surfaced with decorative applied timber framing which extends across the whole of the front and around the returns. The building is now broadly L-shaped in plan, covered with a slate roof, pitched on the southern arm and hipped on the northern arm and with tall brick chimney stacks. The rendered two-storey, brick-built, eastern range street, southern, elevation contains a carriage entrance. The rear western elevation consists of three parts, all constructed in brick and covered with slate roofs. The central section contains the carriage entrance. The wall is surfaced in white glazed brick on the right hand side and on that side of the carriageway only. The upper floor is supported by a beam running most of the length of this part of the building. Internally the building is much altered on the ground floor in the later 20th century with most partition walls removed. The basement contains brick barrel vaulting.
The Wheatsheaf had at least five major phases of rebuilding and expansion, although there were also many smaller interventions within the building. The earliest form of The Wheatsheaf was probably a two-bay, two storey, brick farmhouse, built in the late 17th or early 18th century. This fits in with the form of the yeoman house during this period with a single-depth plan; that is a single room deep. By 1799 a separate, detached, northern brick range had been built. This was two bays long and one bay wide and was probably two storeys high. Its original function is unclear. The barrel-vaulted brick basement/cellar beneath the main Church Street range may date from the late 18th or early 19th century. The biggest period of expansion was the mid-19th century. Between 1835 and 1852 a two-storey brick building one bay wide and two bays long, western wing was added to the rear. By this date the whole complex had become a dedicated public house. Between 1852 and 1876 a further two storey range to the south of this rear wing replaced a wooden structure shown on the 1852 map, was added by 1876. West of the main buildings between 1852 and 1876, an L-shaped range of courtyard buildings was added and a range of pigsties along the southern side of the rear courtyard. These changes mark was the conversion of the whole complex into a public house/inn. In the period 1876 to 1897, the rear, western, elevation of the main Church Street range was further expanded to give its current, 2021, appearance. Early in the 20th century, by the 1920s, the Church Street elevations of the main range and the northern range, with refaced with timber to give a timber-framed, black and white ‘Tudor’, appearance. Between 1935-6 and 1966 the northern courtyard range was demolished and the northern bay of the northern range was also demolished.
Statement of Significance
Asset type
Public HouseAge
Late 17th to late 20th centuryRarity
One of the older public house sites in Altrincham, with documentary evidence showing that the property was in use as a Public House by 1811.Architectural and Artistic Interest
The building is a mixture of local building styles of the 18th and early 19th century, and late Victorian and Edwardian vernacular revival features.Historic Interest
The Wheatsheaf is good example of the evolution of a traditional 17th century vernacular yeoman farmhouse into a rural alehouse and ultimately into a public house in the 20th century.Images and Documents
Date Listed
24 Jul 2023
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