[5] A portrait of Sir William, dated 1579, with a cameo of Queen Elizabeth in his cap, is at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

[11] After his death, Brereton was given to Heneage Legge, who let it to the husband of Sir Charles' daughter, Abraham Bracebridge.

[2] John Howard was the first owner of Brereton to not have direct aristocratic or gentry family heritage, making their fortune entirely through industrial means in nearby Manchester.

[13] Mrs M. Massey evacuated a group of children to Brereton during the Second World War to escape the bombings in Manchester.

[14] The school closed in 1994 as it was impossible to renovate and update the Grade I listed building without large restoration costs.

The present building suggests a reversed E plan, probably with a great hall behind the gateway forming the central bar, demolished and replaced by an 1829 conservatory.

Beyond the entrance is a lower hall and a grand staircase leading to a long gallery which runs along the front of the house.

This leads to the drawing room which contains a frieze with nearly 50 coats of arms and a chimney piece carved with the Brereton emblem, a muzzled bear.

[18] Later Victorian forms of planting landscape remain,[18] although the majority was changed during the period in which the house and grounds were a school.

The house originally had an E-plan before the Howards' restoration, and the royal arms of Elizabeth I can be seen in the central panel, which hint towards the story being genuine.

[20] Michael Drayton and Sir Phillip Sidney wrote of a tradition involving the Brereton Lake, also known as "Bagmere".

[21][22] It was written that before an heir (or "lord"[23]) of the Brereton family were to die, a paranormal event would occur,[22] in which the lake would turn to blood and strange reflections would appear.

[22][21] Sidney wrote that the "dead loges [of trees] upsends, from hideous depth", forming a "sore signe" that the "lord [of Brereton's] last thread is spun".

This involves the local story in which William Brereton killed his valet in a temper, his punishment being to fight a bear.

The symbol of the muzzled bear can be seen throughout the house, as well as in a window in the nearby St. Oswald's Church, and forms part of the Brereton family's coat of arms.

In the work, Drayton described the lake as a "black, omnious mere", that "sends up stocks of trees, that on the top do float, by which the world her first did for a wonder note.

"[19] Brereton appears in Sir Phillip Sidney's Seven Wonders of England – another topographical poem – on the same topic of the lake.

[23] Stanza II reads: The Bruertons have a lake, which, when the sunne Approching warmes, not else, dead loges up sends From hideous depth; which tribute, when it ends, Sore signe it is the lord's last thred is spun.

The earlier William Brereton served as Groom of the Privy Chamber to King Henry VIII, and along with George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, Sir Henry Norris, Sir Francis Weston and a musician, Mark Smeaton, was tried for treason and adultery with Anne Boleyn, the king's second wife.