Hartdale House, Mill Lane, Cheadle, Cheshire- Archaeological Investigation

C & C Estates has recently submitted a planning application to Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council (SMBC) that proposes the conversion and extension of Hartdale House, on Mill Lane in Cheadle (NGR SJ 85502 89006). Hartdale House is a Grade II Listed Building, and is entered on the Greater Manchester Sites and Monument Record (GM SMR 11395.1.0). The development proposal is to provide four self-contained dwellings, car parking, landscaping and ancillary development, which will necessitate some alterations to the building.
In order to secure archaeological interests, SMBC requested that a programme of archaeological investigation was carried out to support and inform the planning application. It was recommended that the scope of archaeological investigation should comprise an English Heritage Level I / II-type survey of the building, coupled with an appropriate level of historical research.
The building survey has provided an archaeological record of the building prior to any future development, and has identified a number of fixtures and fittings that are of historical interest and merit preservation in-situ. This was coupled with desk-based research, which has concluded that the study area has some potential to contain in-situ buried remains of archaeological interest; buried remains dating to the prehistoric, Roman and medieval periods have been recovered from the immediate vicinity of the study area.
The construction of the proposed new building immediately to the north of Hartdale House is likely to necessitate some earth-moving works. As there is no evidence for this part of the study area to have been subject to any serious level of disturbance previously, it is likely that any buried remains that are present will survive in-situ. The damage or destruction of any such remains will require appropriate mitigation, although in the first instance any further archaeological investigation should be intended to establish the presence or absence of any such remains so that an appropriate scheme of mitigation can be devised.