It's the Cheshire landmark built to commemorate the Battle of Waterloo. And in more recent times, the White Nancy has been used to pay tribute to the victims of the Manchester Arena terror attack and The Fall frontman Mark E. Smith.
Sitting on top of Kerridge Hill, overlooking the village of Bollington, the White Nancy is a grade II listed structure. But despite the stunning panoramic views that its location provides, perhaps its main draw is the intrigue it creates in everyone that visits.
Many visitors are left wondering what it actually is, and why it was put there in the first place. White Nancy was built in 1817 by John Gaskell junior of North End Farm to commemorate Wellington’s victory at the Battle Of Waterloo. John Gaskell was a member of the Gaskell family who lived nearby at Ingersley Hall, CheshireLive reports.
The oddly conical shaped structure originally had an entrance to a single room which was furnished with stone benches and a central round table, but the entrance is now blocked. There are several theories on why it is called White Nancy.
Local folklore has it that the landmark was named after the lead horse that had transported all materials for the building of White Nancy. But John Langdill, from Macclesfield Historical Society, has another explanation, which stems around the Kerridge being nicknamed Nancy.
He said: "For many years before the monument was erected the north end of Kerridge had been the site of an ordnance beacon. Chains of these beacons were erected and maintained by the Board of Ordnance and occupied prominent sites across the country which were visible from each other.
"The remains of another one exist on Alderley Edge, in the woods near the National Trust car park. In the time before rapid communication the beacons were intended to be lit in sequence to warn of a national emergency, such as the Spanish Armada. It seems that, because of the presence of the ordnance beacon, the northern end of Kerridge became known as Northern Nancy and the slopes of the ridge as Nancy Side, well before White Nancy was built."
The structure wasn’t actually painted white until 1856, so it wouldn’t have been known as White Nancy at the point it was built in 1817. Since the 1980s it’s become fashionable to paint White Nancy, sometimes as a commemoration, other times as artwork or just vandalism.
In the 1980, it was painted as a plum pudding at Christmas. On another occasion, vandals painted the whole thing pink.
During 1999 Nancy was completely repaired, re-plastered and repainted by local contractor Allen Stringer. He also gave the monument a coat of anti-graffiti wax but this was damaged by vandals who later painted the monument with house paint.
In May 2009 it was repainted white in time for the Bollington Festival and the ball on the top was coloured black. White Nancy was decorated in royal insignia for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in June 2012.
In 2015, in recognition of the reason for its construction, the structure was decorated with a '200th Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo' motif. In May 2017, by request of the mayor of Bollington, a bee motif was painted onto the monument after the Manchester Arena Bombing.
In 2018 the image of Mark E Smith from Manchester band The Fall, was painted on White Nancy with the slogan “This Nation’s Saving Grace” to commemorate the singer, who had recently passed away. A Facebook group claimed responsibility.
Also images of Remembrance Day poppies and the Olympic Rings have appeared on the sides of White Nancy.
Access to the monument is now much easier as Bollington Town Council decided that a proper path should be constructed, from the private roadway that crosses the north face of the hill to the top. This project became known as the Kerridge Steps.
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