page_title: Alderley Park
section_title: ICI
hierarchical_section_title: Alderley Park / Business use / ICI
caption_attribution_description: English: Aldlerley House at Alderley Park, Cheshire
context_page_description: Alderley Park was a country estate at Nether Alderley, Cheshire, England, between Macclesfield and Knutsford. It was the residence of the Stanley family of Alderley from the 1500s. It became the headquarters of ICI Pharmaceuticals in the 1950s. It was purchased from AstraZeneca by Bruntwood in 2014. The site has an international reputation as a home for bio and life sciences.
  The Aldlerley New Hall was constructed in brick with a stone facade for the 7th Baronet Stanley. Building started in 1818 on a site in the south of the park. The new house grew to a size of sixty bedrooms and six entertaining rooms, of which only one room, with its oak panelling and coats of arms intact, remains. Behind the house a walled garden and a water garden were created and the mill pond enlarged. In 1931, however, the house was severely damaged by fire and left empty for nearly twenty years until converted in 1950 by Imperial Chemical Industries to serve as the base for their new pharmaceutical division. The gardens and some outbuildings have been preserved and many thousands of trees planted.
context_section_description: In 1950 the dilapidated hall and 350 acres (140 ha) of surrounding parkland were purchased, with planning permission to develop, by ICI Pharmaceuticals for £55,000. Work began in 1957 on a site by Radnor Mere (the enlarged mill pond) to provide office and laboratory facilities, initially for ICI and latterly for AstraZeneca (after ICI Pharmaceuticals became Zeneca Pharmaceuticals in 1993), and which came to house some 3,500 staff. It became a global lead centre for cancer research and a number of anti-cancer treatments were developed at the site including Nolvadex, Zoladex, Casodex, Arimidex and Iressa. The ground-breaking anaesthetic Diprivan was discovered in the laboratories in 1973.
  In 1963 a new Alderley House was built as the commercial headquarters (and was demolished in 2015). Work on the latest modification of the Alderley Old Hall began in 1963, and incorporates a surviving part of the previous buildings. Originally the Tenant's Hall (and used a hospital in the Great War), this building is now named the Sir James Black Conference Centre in honour of the Nobel Prize-winning discoverer of beta-blockers. The gardens and the woodlands have been restored and the nearby Grade II listed Home Farm buildings preserved. The latter includes coach-houses, cottages and barns of hand-made English orange brick and a six-sided columbarium or dovecote.
caption: Aldlerley House and Sir James Black Conference Centre
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