page_title: Rowland Egerton-Warburton
section_title: Landowner and benefactor
hierarchical_section_title: Rowland Egerton-Warburton / Landowner and benefactor
caption_attribution_description: Photograph of Great Budworth village, Cheshire, UK.
context_page_description: Rowland Eyles Egerton-Warburton DL was an English landowner and poet from the Egerton family in Cheshire. He was a devout Anglican in the high church tradition and a local benefactor. He paid for the restoration of his parish church and for the building of two new churches in villages on his estates. He also built cottages and farm buildings in the villages.
  Through his mother's line he inherited the Arley and Warburton estates in Cheshire. He is best remembered for rebuilding Arley Hall and its chapel dedicated to St Mary, and for helping to create the picturesque appearance of the village of Great Budworth. He and his wife designed extensive new formal gardens to the southeast of the hall, which included one of the earliest herbaceous borders in Britain. The hall and gardens are still owned by his family, but are open to the public.
  Egerton-Warburton's main hobby was hunting. He was a keen member, and later the president, of the nearby Tarporley Hunt Club. He also wrote poetry, the subject matter of which reflected his interests in hunting and in the countryside. Some of his rhymes are to be found on signposts in the grounds of the hall.
context_section_description: Egerton-Warburton managed the Arley estate from 1825 until his death in 1891.  During this time the estate was profitable and he was able to enjoy a larger income than his predecessors. He was a high church Anglican and a supporter of the Oxford Movement, having been influenced by Keble, Pusey and Newman. He regularly attended choral Matins in the chapel at Arley Hall, and on hunt days he wore his hunting colours. He took little interest in politics, in which respect he is regarded as having been "passive".
  In the 1850s he paid for the restoration of his local parish church of St Mary and All Saints at Great Budworth, where he encouraged a more Anglo-Catholic style of worship. He paid for the building of new churches in two villages on his estates.  In the village of Warburton he paid for the new church of St Werburgh.  This was built in 1883–85 to a design by John Douglas of Chester, at which time Egerton-Warburton's nephew, Rev. Geoffrey Egerton-Warburton, was the incumbent. This church replaced the old church in Warburton, also dedicated to St Werburgh, as the parish church. The old church still exists on another site in the village. In the village of Appleton Thorn, 3.3 miles (5 km) to the north of Arley Hall, he paid for St Cross church, which was built in 1886–87 to a design by Edmund Kirby of Liverpool.
  Egerton-Warburton also paid for the construction of secular buildings in villages on his estates, many of which were designed by John Douglas.  In Great Budworth he had a "campaign to restore the village and render it picturesque in Victorian eyes". He restored many of the cottages in the village and built new ones to blend with them. In 1875, the George and Dragon, a simple three-bay Georgian inn in the village, was remodelled by adding ribbed chimneys, moulded brick mullions, an elliptical-headed doorway and a steep pyramid-shaped turret. The village has changed little since then and it remains "one of Cheshire's most charming villages". In 1873 he paid for the building of a cottage in Arley Green and founded Arley School in the village. In Warburton, he paid for a school in 1871–72, a church hall in 1889, and a post office in 1893. Features in the style of Douglas were added to the timber-framed Bent Farm, which stands opposite the new church, in 1880. He also built the public road from Arley Hall to Appleton Thorn.
caption: Cottages in Great Budworth
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