Altrincham received its market charter in 1290 and retains the bones of its medieval layout beneath a later overlay of Victorian and Edwardian development. It is a prosperous town in the south of Trafford borough, and its surrounding landscape, including the substantial National Trust estate at Dunham Massey, gives the area a depth of historic character unusual for somewhere so close to the Manchester conurbation.

Its haunting accounts draw on that depth, with reports from older properties in the town centre and from the estate buildings and grounds to the south. Accounts associated with buildings of genuine age tend to be more interesting than those from the suburban development that dominates much of the borough, and Altrincham has enough of the former to make it worth attention.