Thread: Beaudesert Hall - Cannock Chase

I am not a particularly big fan of this kind of thing, but this blew me away

A big thankyou to my good friend "Nell" for helping me find it....cheers dude

Hidden at the back of Castle ring up on Cannock Chase is this fine old place. This is whats left after the demolition company went bust, half way through the job during 1934. Apparently the original building was erected sometime during the 11th Century and was used by the Bishops of Coventry and Lichfield, in 1568 it ended up with one of Henry the 8th's henchmen ( William Paget ) who gave it to his son. He did some mod's, it was "gothicked up" during the 1770's and a huge fire ripped through it 1909.






You can see where the later mod's were done here quite well, a very strange mixture of old medieval stonework and later brickwork.











Here's Birmingham Archaeology's 3d laser scanned reconstruction they did for English Heritage to help give you an idea of the size of the place






Check out the pipes poking through the concrete




And of course......the ubiquitous light switch








There is a fantastic old wall that circles the entire place, this section had a small room in it with some rusty iron "things"







This was a bit unexpected.....but explains the abandoned boat a few pics above




Yet another storage room built in the bridge next to the ( once ) ornate pool.




Running along the main driveway up to the building is this wall I mentioned earlier. It's got a good 500 years worth of shrubbery around it but still one or two more sunken rooms along the way




I understand this is where the original medieval stone was quarried from



and here is a drawing I found giving an impression of the place



Nell.....the dude who helped me locate it worked at the Coal Board back in the mists of time ( remember that ).....sniff and told me he had read this place used to burn up to a ton of coal per day !!!!

Love the multi-coloured brickwork

And all those hidden rooms and openings! Must have been an amazing place before part-demolition. Great find

Originally Posted by chedd

Amazing textures, looks fun

Nice pictures babe! I have just got in the house, had a bowl of soup, sat down at the computer for my evening doss and find out you have posted pictures of the very place I have been all day!

I may post one of the 'icicle' shots I have...you seem to have covered all the other angles!

Nice place isn't it?!

oh no......your kiddin' me

lol , i think i know where going with this icicle thing i wouldnt mind have a crawl around the underground parts, nice one chedd

A lot of the materials from Beaudesert were reused in the construction of a large house called 'Carrick Hill', in Adelaide, Australia. See Carrick Hill

I was in Adelaide in about 1992 and went to this house - you can imagine my surprise when I found out that some of the materials had come from Cannock!
(Of course this was before the days of the internet - it is much easier to find out these facts now !!)
(wikipedia has more info on Beaudesert and Carrick Hill)