Qualla: Peckforton Hills

Peckforton Hills: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Styles, CC BY-SA 2.0. Every Ascension Day, the parishioners of St Boniface in Bunbury walk up to the 200-metre summit of Stanner Nab for an evening service that ends as the sun sets across the Cheshire Plain. The hill they climb is older than almost anything else they know - around 250 million years of Triassic sandstone, laid down when this part of England was a desert near the centre of the supercontinent Pangaea. The Peckforton Hills are a narrow ridge running broadly north-east to south-west across western Cheshire, part of the longer Mid Cheshire Ridge that extends from Frodsham in the north down past Malpas. They look small from the motorway, but they hold the headwaters of two rivers, the foundations of two castles, and a microclimate of ancient woodland that survives nowhere else in the county.

Read more: Peckforton Hills on Qualla

Image: Peter Styles | CC BY-SA 2.0

Peckforton Hills: A Desert Frozen in Sandstone

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vertigogen, CC BY-SA 2.0. The oldest rock here belongs to the Wilmslow Sandstone Formation, around 250 million years old, deposited as dune sands and river sediments in the arid heart of Pangaea. Above it sits the slightly younger Helsby Sandstone Formation, about 245 million years old, which forms most o...

Read more: Peckforton Hills on Qualla

Image: Vertigogen | CC BY-SA 2.0

Peckforton Hills: Two Castles, Two Centuries Apart

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bryan Pready, CC BY-SA 2.0. Walk the ridge from north to south and you pass two castles within sight of each other. Beeston Castle, technically on an outlier of the range, sits as a genuine medieval ruin on its own steep crag, founded in 1226 by Ranulf de Blondeville, sixth Earl of Chester, and slighted by ...

Read more: Peckforton Hills on Qualla

Image: Bryan Pready | CC BY-SA 2.0

Peckforton Hills: The Hills' Quiet Inhabitants

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Espresso Addict, CC BY-SA 2.0. Peckforton Woods covers 57.88 hectares of the ridge and is protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Bulkeley Hill, at the southern end of the ridge at 224 metres, is owned by the National Trust, and its wooded slopes hold about twelve acres of semi-natural ancient wood...

Read more: Peckforton Hills on Qualla

Image: Espresso Addict | CC BY-SA 2.0

Peckforton Hills: Walking the Spine

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Harris, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Sandstone Trail, the long-distance footpath that links Frodsham to Whitchurch over 55 kilometres, runs along the spine of the Peckforton ridge. From its high points - Raw Head at 227 metres, Peckforton Point at 203 metres, Stanner Nab at 200 metres - the walker looks down ove...

Read more: Peckforton Hills on Qualla

Image: Mike Harris | CC BY-SA 2.0