Members of the landed gentry, with their seat just across the county boundary, in Derbyshire, it was they who in 1618 installed the distinctive Jacobean cage newel staircase, from which the house takes its modern name.

That may have been done as a response to changing tastes, or possibly to overcome the practical difficulties of moving large objects, such as furniture, about the house.

The House, including the staircase, was painstaking restored using traditional materials, tools and techniques, following a major fire in 1995,[5] the second of two arson attacks on the semi-derelict building.

[6] The Trust, local volunteers, argued that the House was a unique survival and should be preserved and, on that basis, it dissuaded the council from demolishing the building as a dangerous structure as had been previously proposed.

It forms part of Stockport Museum, with a collection that includes objects and displays from the Palaeolithic period, the Mellor Iron Age hilltop settlement, through medieval times, the local Victorian era textile industry, the impact of World War I, Strawberry Studios, and the history of sport in the town.