Stanley Palace

Stanley Palace was raised in 1591 on the site of the Black (Dominican) Friary, as the town house of Sir Peter Warburton, a local lawyer and Member of Parliament. When Warburton died in 1621 the house passed to his daughter, and her marriage to Sir Thomas Stanley gave the building the name it still carries today.

Its hardest chapter came after the Civil Wars, when James Stanley, the 7th Earl of Derby, was held under arrest at the house before being transported to Bolton for execution. Part of the house was later demolished, and the south-west wing was rebuilt in the early 18th century. By then its days as a mansion were over: by the early 19th century it had been divided into apartments and its condition was deteriorating, and during the 1870s it housed a boys' school.

The building was sold to the 15th Earl of Derby in 1889, and in the early 1920s it held what was described as a museum of 1,000 curios. The north wing was rebuilt in 1935. Today it is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building — timber-framed on an ashlar sandstone plinth, two storeys, brick to the south wall and slate above.

Stanley Palace is administered by the Friends of Stanley Palace and is in use as a hire space and meeting rooms, so access depends on what is happening inside on any given day — it is worth checking ahead rather than simply turning up. Organised public ghost hunts are held at the venue, and for anyone who wants to spend a long evening in the building after dark, joining one is the most straightforward way in.

Even if you only see it from the street, it rewards a slow look: the jettied upper storey with its moulded bressumer, the decorated panels below and beside the windows, the herringbone struts in the gables and the finials at their peaks. Watergate Street is in central Chester, so the Palace is easily reached on foot.