This article is about the Cheshire landmark. For the variety of flowering plant named "White Nancy" see Lamium maculatum

Lamium maculatum

Lamium maculatum is a flowering plant in the family Lamiaceae.-Description:...

White Nancy is a structure at the top of the northern extremity of The Saddle of Kerridge, overlooking the village of Kerridge

Kerridge

Kerridge is a village in Cheshire, England, part of the parish of Bollington. Kerridge borders the neighbouring parish of Rainow.It gives its name to Kerridge Ridge – one of the western foothills of the Pennines – by which it stands. It is overlooked by the local landmark of White Nancy...

 and the town of Bollington

Bollington

Bollington is a small rural town and civil parish in the county of Cheshire, , England, in the unitary authority of Cheshire East. It is located east of Prestbury. In the Middle Ages it was part of the Earl of Chester's manor of Macclesfield., and the ancient parish of Prestbury...

, Cheshire

Cheshire

Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...

, England. It has been designated by English Heritage

English Heritage

English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...

 as a Grade II listed building, and is on the National Monuments Record. Its profile forms the logo for the town of Bollington. The origin of its name is unknown.

History

White Nancy was built in 1817 by John Gaskell junior of North End Farm to commemorate the victory at the Battle of Waterloo

Battle of Waterloo

The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands...

. John Gaskell was a member of the Gaskell family who lived nearby at Ingersley Hall

Ingersley Hall

Ingersley Hall, later Savio House, stands to the east of the town of Bollington, Cheshire, England. The house was built in about 1775 for John Gaskell. Extensions were added to it in 1833 for John Upton Gaskell. The house was sold by the Gaskell family in 1933. In the 1950s it was taken over by...

. It originally had an entrance to a single room which was furnished with stone benches and a central round stone table, but the entrance is now blocked. It has been described as a summer house

Summer house

A summer house or summerhouse has traditionally referred to a building or shelter used for relaxation in warm weather. This would often take the form of a small, roofed building on the grounds of a larger one, but could also be built in a garden or park, often designed to provide cool shady places...

 or a folly

Folly

In architecture, a folly is a building constructed primarily for decoration, but either suggesting by its appearance some other purpose, or merely so extravagant that it transcends the normal range of garden ornaments or other class of building to which it belongs...

.

In the mid-1940s, the Royal Signal Corps Trials Unit based at Catterick would drive a truck-mounted dish-shaped transmitter/receiver up to White Nancy. Here they tested cathode-ray tube transmission and reception (data-based, not images), to a mobile receiving station on another truck. The receiver would be driven further and further south over time, until eventually the lads at White Nancy were sending a signal to the south coast of the country.
Locals told the signallers that the landmark was named after the lead horse that had transported all the materials for the building of White Nancy.

Description

The structure is circular in plan with its shape described as that of a sugar loaf, and is surmounted with a ball finial

Finial

The finial is an architectural device, typically carved in stone and employed decoratively to emphasize the apex of a gable or any of various distinctive ornaments at the top, end, or corner of a building or structure. Smaller finials can be used as a decorative ornament on the ends of curtain rods...

. It is built in sandstone

Sandstone

Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...

 rubble

Rubble

Rubble is broken stone, of irregular size, shape and texture. This word is closely connected in derivation with "rubbish", which was formerly also applied to what we now call "rubble". Rubble naturally found in the soil is known also as brash...

 which has been rendered

Stucco

Stucco or render is a material made of an aggregate, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as decorative coating for walls and ceilings and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture...

 and painted. It is about 18 feet (5 m) high. Stone paving has been laid around its base which is inscribed with the points of the compass

Boxing the compass

Boxing the compass is the action of naming all thirty-two points of the compass in clockwise order. Such names are formed by the initials of the cardinal directions and their intermediate ordinal directions, and are very handy to refer to a heading in a general or colloquial fashion, without...

.

Until at least 1925 the structure was unpainted. It has been painted in a number of different colours over the years, most commonly in white. In 2005 vandals painted it partly in pink. In March 2009 it was repainted in white with the ball finial in black.

Visitor attraction

White Nancy provides a focus on the ridge of the Saddle of Kerridge and from it there are extensive views across the Cheshire Plain

Cheshire Plain

The Cheshire Plain is a relatively flat expanse of lowland situated almost entirely within the county of Cheshire in northwest England. It is bounded by the hills of North Wales to the west, and the Peak District of Derbyshire and North Staffordshire to the east and southeast...

 towards the mountains of North Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 to the west, the hills of Shropshire

Shropshire

Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...

 to the south and the Pennines

Pennines

The Pennines are a low-rising mountain range, separating the North West of England from Yorkshire and the North East.Often described as the "backbone of England", they form a more-or-less continuous range stretching from the Peak District in Derbyshire, around the northern and eastern edges of...

 to the north and east. The Gritstone Trail

Cheshire Gritstone Trail

The Cheshire Gritstone Trail is a long-distance footpath in England split into three stages. The first stage, in length, leads from Disley to Tegg's Nose; the second, of length , from Tegg's Nose to Timbersbrook, is the best for obtaining a close look at gritstone scenery...

passes close to it.