Highwayman Higgins’ House

On quiet, leafy Gaskell Avenue in Knutsford stand two white houses known today as Heath House. Their calm façades conceal the story of Edward “Squire” Higgins, a man who, according to local history, lived among the Cheshire gentry while secretly robbing them blind.

Parish records show that in 1757, Edward Higgins, described as a yeoman, married Catherine Birtles and settled in Knutsford. To his neighbors, he was every inch the gentleman: he rode with the local hunt, hosted soirées, and kept a fine home. But folklore insists that behind his polished manners, Higgins was a career highwayman whose “rent-collecting trips” were convenient covers for robbery.

Stories tell that he was once sentenced to transportation to the American colonies, escaped, and returned to England under a new guise. His luck, legend says, ran out in 1767 after a bungled burglary in Wales. Captured and condemned to hang, he supposedly forged his own pardon, but the deception failed.

The most enduring tale claims that, ever the schemer, Higgins sold his body to a London surgeon to provide for his family. When the dissection began, the astonished anatomists found him still alive.

Though it’s difficult to separate fact from embellishment, Heath House remains tied to his name, and to a story that Knutsfordians still whisper. On still nights, some say you can hear the faint tread of hooves on the old Chester Road, Squire Higgins, riding once more into the dark.