Historic Liverpool Dwellings - Alder Grange

Alder Grange is a Grade 11 listed mansion on the corner of Central Drive and Eaton Road, Sandfield Park, formerly known as Kiln Hey, built in the 1860s but extended in 1885. Brick built with stone dressings and a slate roof it has four 2 storey bays; the 1st bay projects under pediment with other bays projecting ground floor. With ground floor cornice, the 1st floor sill band and scroll brackets to eaves, the windows have wedge lintels with segmental heads and are sashed. The 1st bay has a stone base with 3 square windows below to a Venetian window with foliated aprons. The other windows are either mullioned, transomed or sashes as seen on the ground floor with 3-light mullioned, and transomed windows and a porch with flat pilastrade and parapet and there are Attic windows below the eaves. Internal features include panelled rooms, an Adamesque ceiling, and a staircase under a coffered barrell vault.This mid 19th century house was once the home of Edward Hatton Cookson, a West Africa merchant, Mayor of Liverpool in 1888, who was also elected Alderman of the Edge Hill Ward by the Council on the 9th of November 1895. Cookson lavishly redecorated the house, with the drawing room designed in an 18th century style with painted panels resembling Pompeian murals. Other rooms had Elizabethan-style panelling. 

  

In 1925, after suitable alterations, it became the Sir Robert Davis Nursing Home through the munificence of the late shipowner of Liverpool. It was for the exclusive use of middle-class patients of limited means. Standing in 20 acres, it could accommodate 30 patients and the Everton footballing legend Dixie Dean convalesced there in 1926 after fracturing his skull in a motorbike accident. Some medical experts thought he would never play football again, but two years later, in the 1927-28 season, he scored a record-breaking 60 league goals!

 

Historian Stephen Guy pointed out that, in the 1980s, Kiln Hey/Alder Grange became an old people’s home, with some of its grounds developed as sheltered accommodation: "The old people’s home got into financial difficulties, closed and became neglected. In 2007 it was torched after ornate fireplaces and other fittings were stolen. Fortunately the famous Cookson stained glass window, the main reason the building is Grade II-listed, was undamaged. This ornate window, dating from the 1880s, grandly commemorates the Cookson family." After standing empty for years, it was bought by Bristol-based former banker David Walker, of Downfield Homes Ltd, in 2015 who is spending about £6 million to turn the former mansion into thirteen luxury apartments and seven houses and renamed 'Aldergrange'. 

( for more pictures visit - https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/gallery/alder-grange-in-west-derby-11103145 )

see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2022/11/historic-liverpool-dwellings-lee-hall.html