_Tabley Hall_, which resembles Tatton in architecture, was completed in the year 1769. The old hall, now in a ruinous condition, and in danger of becoming a tumbled heap by its thick mantling of ivy, together with a detached brick chapel dated 1675, stand on an island in the circling mere. This was the home of Sir Peter Leycester, the representative of a long lineage, and the first great historian of Cheshire families, who was buried at Budworth in 1678. The above-mentioned halls lie on the northern and western sides of Knutsford; two others are on the south side of that town, namely:-- _Toft Hall_, another seat of the Leycester family for many generations, and remarkable now for its fine avenue of elms in triple rows. Ralph Leycester, who died in 1777, owned this estate for no fewer than 70 years. _Peover Hall_ is associated with the Mainwarings from Plantagenet times, whose surname, according to the antiquary Dugdale, had undergone 131 variations of spellings in old deeds. Sir Henry Mainwaring, who died unmarried on 6th April 1797, was the last direct descendant. By his will the estate came to his uterine half-brother, Thomas Wettenhall, of Nantwich, who took the name and arms of Mainwaring, and, dying the following year, on 12th July 1798, thus became the ancestor of the present line of baronets of Peover. Farther away from Knutsford, on the borders of Delamere Forest, stand three notable houses; namely, _Delamere House_, designed by Wyatt, and owned by Mr. Wilbraham, who is the direct descendant of the ancient family of Wilbraham of Woodhey in the south part of the county; _Vale Royal_, the seat of the present Lord Delamere, that estate having been purchased in 1615 by the noble lady, Mary Cholmondeley, widow of Sir Hugh Cholmondeley, and known in history as “the bold lady of Cheshire,” who entertained King James I. on his progress through the county in 1617; and _Utkinton Hall_, now a farmhouse with some remains of its former importance, which in the same year, 1617, was the residence of the forester, Sir John Done, who had married Dorothy, daughter of Thomas Wilbraham of Woodhey, whose manners and character were “so amiable that to this day” (as Thomas Pennant says in 1782), “when a Cheshire man would express some excellency in one of the fair sex, he would say, ‘There is a Lady Done for you!’” Very fine specimens of ancient timber houses are at Bramhall, Little Moreton, Adlington; and the hall at Baguley, perhaps the oldest building of its kind in the county, has massive oak beams, still in good condition, proving the durability of that material for building construction. Of stone and brick mansions, Brereton is the best example of Tudor architecture; Dorfold and Crewe of the seventeenth century renaissance; Oulton, Lyme, and Doddington of the later palladian style.