 Attempts to gain planning permission to build a village of a hundred houses on of greenfield estate land, with the stated aim of funding restoration of the abbey, met with substantial opposition and were turned down in 2005.A subsequent scheme to build 43 houses on a greenfield site south of the nearby small village of Aston, as an "enabling development" to fund repairs to the north wing, again met with opposition; it was rejected by Cheshire East in April 2012 for having "insufficient public benefit ... to outweigh the harm in terms of new residential development in the Open Countryside.