Mow Cop Castle is a folly at Mow Cop in the civil parish of Odd Rode, Cheshire, England. It is registered on the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building. The ridge, on which the castle sits, forms the boundary between the counties of Cheshire and Staffordshire, the dioceses of Chester and Lichfield, and the ecclesiastical provinces of Canterbury and York.
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| Mow Cop Folly Castle History |
History
Traces of a prehistoric camp have been found here. In 1754, Randle Wilbraham of nearby Rode Hall built an elaborate summer house that resembled a medieval fortress and round tower.
The area around the castle was nationally famous for the quarrying of high-quality millstones (' molinos ') for use in watermills. Excavations at Mow Cop have found mills dating from the Iron Age.
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| Mow Cop Folly Castle History |
The castle was given to the National Trust in 1937. The same year, over ten thousand Methodists gathered on the hill to commemorate the first Primitive Methodist camp there.
Although visitors were originally allowed inside the folly, the area surrounding it has been fenced off due to several suicide attempts and a suicide on the ledge. At the turn of the millennium in the year 2000, a large fire was ignited alongside the Folly as part of a network of communication beacons across the country.
Mow Cop and his madness are central images in Alan Garner 's novel Red Shift .