Cheshire

For the architectural tourist, one of Cheshire's greatest and most characteristic delights is the use of timber.

Little Moreton Hall has the most elaborate, fantastical and wholeheartedly vulgar display of black-&-white timbering that England has to offer, while the churches include an array of fine late medieval roofs.

Chester, whose famous 'rows' with their upper walkways are unique in medieval Europe, continues the timber-framed tradition in its riotous Victorian buildings but glories also in its Roman past, its medieval cathedral and its encircling city wall.

Lyme Park shows an extraordinary continuity of building from the Elizabethan to the Georgian period.

The northern fringe of the county includes the built-up areas of Manchester's 'stockbroker belt' and the Wirral, with the formal splendour of Birkenhead, and Port Sunlight, the first "garden city" developed for ordinary working people.