Up to 1783 the site to become Rodney Street was waste land, but between 1756 and l771 lots scheduled for building were parcelled out to various Liverpool gentlemen including Scrope Colquitt. Finally in 1783 the entire site was leased to 'Samuel Aspinall, Peter Hope and William Roscoe, all 'Liverpool, Gentlemen'. Subsequently Rodney Street was built to house Liverpool's prosperous merchants, the
wealth of many of whom depended on slaves and the products of their
labour; members of the Tobin and Houghton families were amongst those
who established themselves on the street. John Gladstone was one of the
richest of these merchants; his investment in West Indian plantations
transformed the family's status, enabling Gladstone to pave the way for
his son's political career. 62 Rodney Street is designated at Grade II* for the following principal
reasons:
* Good example of a substantial late C18 merchant's town house
in Liverpool, one of the earlier and more substantial in a remarkably
well-preserved Georgian street
* Birthplace of William Ewart Gladstone, one of Britain's
greatest prime ministers
* Numerous connections with the slave trade add to historical
interest of building. The house was built for John Gladstone, father of
the future prime minister, who commissioned No 62 (originally No.1)
in 1792.
From 1792 to 1846 John Gladstone is recorded as lessee from the Corporation of '345 yards of frontage on Rodney Street running northwardly from Knight Street'. John Gladstones was born in Leith,
Edinburgh, the son of a corn merchant, Gladstones left school at
thirteen to serve as apprentice in a rope and sailcloth company before
entering his father's business. A new partnership brought him to
Liverpool in 1786 where in 1787 he became known as Gladstone having dropped the 's' from his name. The family business was
in American grain and tobacco, the goods on which Gladstone's fortune
was founded.
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| John Gladstone |
The laying out of Rodney Street was the beginning of a Georgian residential development, built to house the
affluent away from the old town centre. The length, width, and
straightness of Rodney Street were unprecedented in Liverpool. It was
developed piecemeal up to the 1820s with pairs and short runs of
substantial houses, mostly three-bay but some, like No. 62, with five
bays. The house was probably designed by John Whiteside
Casson and is built in red brick in Flemish Bond with burnt headers, stone dressings and
slate roof. Three storeys high with rendered basement and eight bays with the last five bays forming a symmetrical composition centred on a slightly
projecting three-bay pedimented centre; a blank oeil-de-boeuf window in
pediment. A stone basement plat band over the ground floor, first-floor sill
band to three-bay centre and top cornice with blocking course. Sash
windows, some with glazing bars, all windows above the basement have
wedge lintels. There are five steps to a central round-headed entrance. The doorcase is
an aedicule with foliated capitals to the attached columns and swag and
urn decoration to the frieze, surmounted by a pediment. The first three
bays are of one storey with a recessed rear section, the second floor of
which has been rebuilt and has a parapet with balustraded sections. Plain
iron area railings curve from the entrance.
He became a life member of the Historical Society of Lancashire and Cheshire in 1862, was elected President the following year, and from 1886 to his death on 19 May, 1898, he was one of the Vice Presidents. In 1899, at the instigation, and partly at the expense of the Society, a tablet of Liverpool Delia Robbia pottery (probably designed by Mr. W. F. Price, who had prepared the tablet erected at No. 118 Duke Street in memory of Mrs. Hemans) was affixed to the front of No. 62 Rodney Street.
William Gladstone was born on 29 December 1809, at the house in Rodney
Street which was his home until the family moved in 1818. From 1818 to 1831 62 Rodney Street was home to John Cardwell, a merchant,
and his family. Cardwell's son Edward (1813-86), also became a
politician, and he and Gladstone were for many years political allies.
From 1847 to 1852 Cardwell represented Liverpool; thereafter he was MP
for Oxford City. An advocate of free trade, his financial expertise was
valued by William Gladstone. Cardwell served as Gladstone's secretary
of state for war from 1868 to 1874. The greatest C19 reformer of the
British army, Cardwell's most important legacy was the abolition of the
system whereby many officers' commissions could be bought and sold.
When Gladstone resigned in 1874, Cardwell was a strong candidate for the
succession but, exhausted by his time at the War Office he accepted a
peerage, instead becoming Viscount Cardwell of Ellerbeck. He continued
to be politically active, speaking out against slavery in the late
1870s. In 1931 Mr. Henry Neville Gladstone (now Lord Gladstone and a member of the Society) arranged to purchase the Corporation lease of this house, then held by the executors of Dr. T. R. Glynn, who had lived there for many years. Mr. Gladstone's desire was to preserve the premises in commemoration of the fact that his father was born there, and also to secure it from alteration in outward appearance. Mr. Gladstone also purchased the freehold interest in the house from the Corporation of Liverpool and arranged for it to be held in perpetuity by the Liverpool Diocesan Board of Finance as Trustee, in the first place to grant a lease to Toe H (Talbot House), in which Mr. Gladstone was interested. Subject to such lease it was to be to held upon trust for ecclesiastical charitable purposes in connection with the Church of England in the City of Liverpool, with special reference to the Parish Church of St. Nicholas, and the Cathedral of Liverpool. Mr Gladstone imposed as conditions of his gift, and of the lease to Toe H, that the structure and external appearance of the facade of the premises to Rodney Street shall be kept as at present, that a new memorial tablet, bearing the inscription mentioned below, shall remain affixed in a conspicuous position on the outside of the house fronting the street, and, further, that the room in which the Prime Minister was born on the first floor shall be carefully maintained in its present form and unaltered. The inscription upon the new tablet, made of cast lead, was to be as follows : GLADSTONE Four Times Prime Minister. Born In this House 29th December 1809. This is now set into the wall, to left
of the entrance, a rectangular lead plaque with cable moulding inside
a convex moulded frame.
On 12 December, 1931, Mr. Gladstone presented the lease of 'Gladstone House' to Toe H and the hostel was declared open by Lord Derby. Subsequently, Lord Gladstone, through his architect, Mr. Gilbert Fraser, proposed to the Council of the Society that the memorial tablet placed on the house in 1899 should be re-erected in the hall of the hostel. The Council welcomed and accepted the proposal and this tablet will be re-erected accordingly. ( for more on the life of William Gladstone - www.thefootballvoice.com/2020/12/a-liverpool-exemplar-william-ewart.html ).
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