The Parish Today
Plumley with Toft and Bexton is a very attractive rural parish. The landscape is dominated by fields (for arable and dairy farming), hedges and large numbers of deciduous hedgerow trees with a scattering of small woods across the area. There are two lakes, numerous field ponds and the delightful Peover Eye trout stream within the parish. The land, which is predominantly clay with occasional areas of surface sand, slopes upwards from a height of 23 metres in the extreme west of Plumley to an altitude of 69 metres in the east of Toft. The Parish is home to a wide range of wildlife and a nature reserve near Ascol Drive that has great crested newts, bats, lichens and liverwort.
The Parish has excellent road inks, A50, A556 and M6 and also has a Cheshire Lines railway station linking the area with both Manchester and Chester. The airports of Liverpool and Manchester are easily accessed from the Parish. The majority of residents commute to work in the nearby towns and cities.
There are approximately 45 businesses within the Parish ranging from a large office complex to businesses run from home. Agriculture and horticulture are very important to the area; not only are they businesses in their own right but they are to great extent responsible for creating the attractive landscape that is enjoyed within the Parish.
Situated within the Parish is Holford Hall, a magnificent large moated timber house built around 1600 for Mary Cholmondeley, nee Holford, on the death of her husband Hugh. It suffered from neglect and fell into disrepair in the nineteenth century. Owned by ICI for much of the last century, it is now restored and in private ownership. For a more photographs and a detailed history of both Holford Hall and the Cholmondeley family visit http://www.thornber.net/cheshire/htmlfiles/holford.html
Holford Hall