History
A fascinating history brought to life
The house is set in the heart of Stockport’s historic market place and boasts an intriguing array of rooms linked by corridors and narrow passages. All the rooms have been restored using period colours, furniture and artefacts which reflect the attraction’s long and eventful history. The bedroom boasts a seventeenth century four poster bed, there’s a two hundred year old table in the eighteenth century dining room, an authentic busy kitchen, and some historic lighting in the tallow room. There are also rumours of ghostly goings-on and the house is allegedly haunted by the ghost of Robert Owten, former butler to the Shallcross family.
Staircase House has been designed to make people feel at home - there are few rope barriers or signs forbidding people to touch objects so visitors can take a truly unique journey back in time.
The buidling is a grade 2* listed medieval town house dating back to around 1460. Very little is known of the house’s early history, though it is thought that it was originally the home of the Mayor of Stockport, William Dodge, in 1483.
The first definite residents were the Shallcross family who owned the house from 1605 - 1730. Part of the landed gentry, it was they who installed the cage newel staircase in 1618, which gives the house its name. The Jacobean staircase is one of only three surviving examples in Britain and has been carefully restored following an almost devastating fire in 1995.
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