You will know the price before you ring us.
Three care homes in Cheshire, run by the same family since 2011. Every weekly fee is on this website, every room that's free is listed with today's date, and you can walk in and look round any day between eight and eight without booking.
has run these homes
three Cheshire homes
from 340 family reviews
member on a day shift
Three homes, twelve miles apart
Choose the home, not the brand
They are genuinely different buildings with different characters, and one of them will suit your mum in a way the other two won't. Here is what each is actually like, including which one has rooms free today.
CQC Outstanding
Ashcombe House
Tabley Road, Knutsford WA16
A 1790s house with eleven acres, a walled kitchen garden the residents actually dig in, and a dementia household of sixteen on the ground floor. The quietest of the three. Marcus has managed it for nine years.
3 rooms available now
CQC Good
Highfield Manor
Trafford Road, Alderley Edge SK9
Our nursing home. A registered nurse on site every hour of every day, a full physiotherapy room, and the only one of the three that takes people on PEG feeds, tracheostomies and complex wound care.
Full · waiting list of 7
CQC Outstanding
The Wren
Chapel Lane, Wilmslow SK9
Built for dementia and nothing else. Four households of nine, each with its own kitchen and front door, circular corridors with no dead ends, and a garden you cannot get lost in. No locked doors anywhere inside.
1 room available nowUpdated 8.15am, 22 August 2026
What is actually free this week
Most care home websites say "please enquire about availability". That's because rooms are the thing they most want you on the phone about. Ours is a board, it's updated every morning, and it says "full" when we're full.
A room held is a room held. If you visit and want one, we hold it for seven days at no charge while you think, talk to family and sort out funding. We do not ring you on day three to say someone else is interested, because that is a sales tactic and not a fact.
What we're registered for
Four kinds of care, one honest price each
Residential care
Help with washing, dressing, medication and meals, in your own furnished room with a proper front door key.
From £1,340 a week, all in
Dementia care
Households of nine to sixteen, no locked internal doors, and staff who stay with the same nine people every shift.
From £1,490 a week, all in
Nursing care
A registered nurse on site 24 hours at Highfield. PEG feeding, tracheostomy, complex wounds, end-of-life care.
From £1,610 a week, all in
Respite & short stays
From one week. A real room on a real corridor, not a spare bed in a side room. Book while you go on holiday.
From £1,415 a week, all in
The bit nobody publishes
One weekly fee. Nothing else, ever.
The care home sector has a habit of quoting a headline weekly figure and then adding for the hairdresser, the chiropodist, the newspaper, the escort to hospital and the "enhanced needs" that appear in month four. We have never done that and we put it in the contract.
- No third-party top-up is ever requested from a family, on any funded placement, at any of our homes
- Your fee does not rise because your needs rise. Dementia progresses; the invoice doesn't follow it.
- Hairdresser, chiropody, newspapers, outings, physiotherapy and hospital escorts are all included
- One annual review, on 1 April, capped at CPI plus 2%, with ninety days' written notice
- Four weeks' notice to leave, and nothing charged after the room is cleared — not the customary fortnight
Six things we do differently
Written down so you can hold us to them
Each of these costs us money or convenience. That's rather the point — a promise that costs nothing isn't a promise.
Visit any day, eight till eight
No appointment, no signing in with a receptionist, no "we'd prefer if you came at a quieter time". Families who visit unannounced see the home as it really is, and that is the only kind of home worth running.
The same faces, every shift
Staff are assigned to a household, not to the building. A resident at The Wren sees the same nine or ten carers all year. We have used an agency nurse eleven times in fifteen years and each one was a night of sickness.
Your own furniture, always
Every room is unfurnished if you want it that way. Bring the bed, the wardrobe, the chair by the window and the pictures. We'll collect them and put them up before your first night — there's a van and two men on the payroll for exactly this.
A real kitchen, a real chef
Tom Bradshaw ran a kitchen in Manchester for eleven years before this. Everything is cooked on site from raw ingredients, there are two choices at every course, and the menu is on this website before it is served.
Nobody is moved out
If your mother comes to us for residential care and later needs nursing, she moves within the group or we bring the nursing to her. We have never asked a family to find somewhere else because needs changed. Not once.
The manager's mobile number
Marcus, Priya and Rachel each give their personal mobile to every family on the day of admission. Not an out-of-hours service, not a duty phone. Nine years in, Marcus says he gets about four calls a month.
Today at Ashcombe · Thursday 22 August
Family are welcome at any meal — there is no charge and no need to tell us you're coming. Roughly nine relatives ate lunch at Ashcombe yesterday.
Thursday, in full
An ordinary day at Ashcombe House
Not the brochure version. This is genuinely what happened last Thursday, taken from the day book.
Nobody is woken
Night staff hand over to the day team. Residents get up when they wake up — three were already in the morning room with the papers, eleven were still asleep at half nine, and both are entirely fine.
Breakfast, for as long as it takes
Cooked to order until eleven. Mr Latham has had two boiled eggs and the crossword at the same table since 2019, and would notice if either changed.
The garden, the choir, or neither
Thursday is the walled garden — six residents plus Jack, our gardener, lifting the second earlies. Simultaneously a singing group of nine in the drawing room, and four people reading in peace, which is also a legitimate way to spend a Thursday.
Lunch, properly laid
Linen, glassware and a wine list on Sundays. Meals are eaten in a dining room, not from a tray on a lap, unless somebody would genuinely rather be in their chair — and then it's still on china.
The difficult hour
Late afternoon is when dementia is hardest. We deliberately overstaff the Garden Household between three and six — two extra carers, every day — because agitation at four o'clock is a staffing problem long before it is a medication one.
Last orders
The bar in the library is open from six. Two residents had a small sherry, one had a Guinness, and Mrs Hartley beat her son at dominoes for the fourth week running.
Photographed in August 2026
The actual rooms, not a show flat
Every picture below was taken this month in a room somebody lives in or eats in. Click any of them to look properly.
9.7 / 10 from 340 reviews on carehome.co.uk
What families say once they've stopped worrying
Three recent reviews, published in full including the one that isn't five stars. We don't take reviews down.
We looked at nine homes. Eight of them wouldn't tell us the weekly fee without "arranging a conversation with the manager". Ashcombe had it on the website, on a page, next to the room number. That told us more about how they'd treat my mother than any tour could. Fourteen months on, the fee is exactly what they said it would be and she has put on nine pounds.
Catherine Ollerton
Daughter · Ashcombe House · June 2026
Dad has advanced Alzheimer's and had been asked to leave his previous home after an incident. The Wren took him in eleven days. There are no locked doors, so he walks — which is what he wants to do — and the corridor brings him back to his own front door. He has not been sedated once in two years. I did not think that was possible.
Simon Whitworth
Son · The Wren, Wilmslow · April 2026
The care is genuinely excellent and the food is better than most restaurants round here. Four stars rather than five because the laundry lost two of Mum's cardigans in the first month and it took three weeks and two conversations to sort out. Eleanor rang me herself about it, which I appreciated, and it hasn't happened again — but I said I'd write what actually happened.
Angela Pemberton
Daughter · Highfield Manor · February 2026
Average tenure: nine years
The people who will actually be there
Every one of them will be in the building when you visit, and you can ask for any of them by name.
Eleanor Whitfield
Managing Director · 15 years
Opened Ashcombe in 2011 after eleven years as a ward sister. Still does one night shift a month at each home, unannounced.
Marcus Adeyemi
Home Manager, Ashcombe · 9 years
Registered manager since 2017 and the reason Ashcombe is Outstanding. Gives every family his mobile number on day one.
Rachel Okonjo
Head of Dementia Care · 7 years
Admiral Nurse. Designed the household model at The Wren and trains every new starter across all three homes herself.
Tom Bradshaw
Executive Head Chef · 6 years
Eleven years in Manchester restaurants before this. Writes every menu, and plates puréed food to look like the dish it came from.
Usually ten to fourteen days
How moving in actually works
It can be done in 48 hours after a hospital discharge, and it can take three months if you want to think. Both are fine.
Come and look
Any day, eight till eight, no appointment. Stay for lunch — it's free and it tells you more than the tour does. Bring your mum if she's able.
We come to you
Marcus or Rachel visits at home or on the ward to assess needs properly. Free, and we'll tell you if we're the wrong home for her.
The room is held
Seven days, no charge, no deposit, no pressure. You get the fee in writing and a contract with nothing hidden in clause 14.
Moving day
Our van collects her furniture and we put the room together before she arrives, pictures on the walls. First fortnight, we ring you daily.
Free · 24 pages · no salesperson will ring
The Cheshire Care Home Fees Guide 2026
What Cheshire East actually pays, how the £23,250 capital threshold works in practice, when NHS Continuing Healthcare is worth fighting for, why deferred payment agreements are underused, and the eleven questions to ask any home that will not publish its fees.
Written by Eleanor Whitfield. Used by two Cheshire hospital discharge teams.
On its way
Check your inbox in the next minute or two. If it isn't there, it's in the junk folder — that happens with PDFs.
Asked on almost every first call
Straight answers
Ours run from £1,340 a week for residential care at Ashcombe to £1,610 for nursing at Highfield. That is roughly £69,700 to £83,700 a year, and it is genuinely everything — there is no separate bill for hairdressing, chiropody, newspapers, outings or hospital escorts.
Across Cheshire East as a whole, self-funded residential care typically runs £1,250–£1,700 a week and nursing £1,500–£2,100. If a home quotes you well under that, ask carefully what is excluded, and ask whether a third-party top-up will be requested later. Our full fee table is here.
If your mother has assets under £23,250 including the value of her house — though the house is disregarded in some circumstances, notably if a spouse or a dependent relative still lives in it — Cheshire East will contribute after a financial assessment. We hold eleven council-funded placements across the three homes and we take them at the council rate.
We never ask the family for a third-party top-up. That is unusual and it costs us roughly £190 a week per placement, but a top-up is in practice a charge for existing, and we won't levy it.
Furniture, yes — and we'd encourage it. Rooms come furnished or empty, whichever you want. Our van and two of our maintenance team will collect from anywhere in the North West at no charge and have the room set up, pictures hung, before she arrives.
Cats and small dogs, yes, at Ashcombe and The Wren, subject to a conversation about who feeds them if she becomes unwell. There are currently four cats, a Jack Russell and a rather elderly parrot living at Ashcombe. Highfield is nursing-registered and can't take pets in rooms, though visiting dogs are welcome anywhere.
Two things do not happen. Your fee does not go up, and she is not asked to leave. We have never in fifteen years told a family to find somewhere else because needs changed, including for people who became doubly incontinent, non-weight-bearing or who required end-of-life care.
If nursing becomes genuinely necessary, there's a room at Highfield or we bring district nursing in. If dementia advances, the Garden Household at Ashcombe or a household at The Wren takes her, and she keeps the same staff wherever we can manage it.
Eight in the morning until eight at night, every day, no appointment and no signing in with anyone. You can eat with her, take her out, put her to bed, or sit and say nothing for two hours. Outside those hours ring the home and someone will let you in — people do not only become unwell in office hours.
We ask two things: don't come in with a cold or a stomach bug, and if she's in the bathroom when you arrive, give her ten minutes. That's the whole policy.
Read the CQC reports rather than taking our word for it — Ashcombe and The Wren are rated Outstanding, Highfield is Good with Outstanding for caring, and all three are on the CQC website in full including the things they told us to fix. We link to them rather than quoting the flattering paragraph.
Then visit unannounced on a Sunday afternoon, which is when a home is at its thinnest. Look at whether the residents are dressed, whether anyone is sitting in a corridor, and whether the staff know people's names without checking. That is the real inspection.
Come for lunch. Decide afterwards.
You'll see the home at its most ordinary, which is exactly what you want. Nobody will follow you round with a brochure and nobody will ring you afterwards unless you ask us to.