But Peover Hall - home of the Mainwaring family for 800 years and the Brooks family for 49 years - doesn't stand on ceremony.

Other tours of Cheshire homes may offer more stately sights but few can be as laid back as a trip to Peover Hall.

The doors of the hall are open every Monday afternoon, except for Bank Holidays, with an invitation to visitors to sit on any chair they fancy.

"It's a living house," said guide Ian Shepherd. "It's not a National Trust house - anyone can sit down."

The Mainwaring family first settled at Over Peover just after the Norman Conquest. Cheshire, by virtue of being one of the last areas to be conquered and its proximity to the Welsh border, was not an easy place to control for the first of the family, a Norman knight.

But the Mainwarings hung on, making their mark on the campaign with the Welsh and the English Civil War.

The hall itself dates back to 1585 with Sir Randle Mainwaring, although there is evidence of the family's earlier occupation of the site.

Neighbouring St Lawrence Church boasts a mid-15th century chapel and the outline of the old half-timbered moated house which pre-dates Peover Hall can be seen in the hottest days of summer.

The history of the family, needless to say, follows the tumultous path of English history and only a visit to the house can do the Mainwarings justice.

Sir Thomas Mainwaring - the first of the Mainwarings to keep his horses in the fabulous Carolean Stables, the most precious architectural gem of the whole building - stands out. According to Mr Shepherd, Sir Thomas was a canny operator who refused to commit himself to either side of the Civil War and as result became sheriff and MP for Cheshire and was created a Baronet in 1660.

Recent history has not been as kind to Peover Hall as the days that Sir Thomas Mainwaring lived in.

It was sold to the son of a Manchester cotton magnate in 1919 who then sold it to Harry Brooks, the Manchester furniture tycoon, in 1940.

General George Patton, the hall's most famous occupant during the war, was no Sir Thomas. The outspoken war hero - often in trouble for saying what he wanted - commented that the house was the biggest he had ever lived in but complained about the draughts. His stars and stripes still adorn neighbouring St Lawrence Church.

He wasn't the only wartime resident.

The hall was used as a prisoner of war camp, as a military base and as a resettlement home for Allied PoWs and English residents kicked out of India after the partition.

When the Brooks family got the house back in 1950, it was a shell in desperate need of an overhaul.

"You took your life in your hands when you walked in because the floors were so bad," said Mr Shepherd. "The restoration took 10 years to complete."

The Georgian addition was demolished, something which Mr Shepherd admits wouldn't be possible today despite its poor condition, in favour of complete restoration of the Elizabethan whole.

The official literature that goes with the tour describes the remainder as an ideally-sized, irregular structure of much charm with gables, parapets and mullion and transom windows. And the rooms - all occupied by the family - are just as impressively restored.

The interior can best be described as eclectic.

Oliver Cromwell's boot, an immense Tamworth bed so heavy the floor beneath needs supports, a model train which used to entertain children on Crewe Station and paintings of some of England's best known monarchs vie for space on walls, floors and shelves.

There is still a branch of the family in Shropshire so the original artefacts are not so easy to acquire.

Only the suits of armour and weapons, perched above the fireplace in the Great Hall, and one or two paintings belong to the original family. The rest of the art and ornaments have been brought in.

But this mixture of the indigenous, the strange and the personal makes the £3 entrance fee worthwhile.

"I loved it," said Janice Carpenter, a former curator of Liverpool University's art collection.

"It has all the hallmarks of a house that was comfortable to live in and it's nice of them to let people wander around bedrooms which are in use."

The Monday afternoon tours and open days are popular. The hall attracts both the casual retired visitor with time on his hands and the more serious student.

One visitor was ticking off a list of every stately home and castle in Britain open to the public - after Peover Hall he only had 10 left. Many visitors are former American servicemen or resettled ex-patriots keen to see their former wartime billet restored.

Keith Harrop from Knutsford has not visited the house for years but is impressed by the transformation.

"I used to come through when the hounds were here hunting," he said.

"It's changed quite a bit. It was more or less in ruins then, just after the war when the forces had been in.

"It's nice to see it back."

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