Sandown Hall was built in circa 1810 by the Earle family with Willis Earle being a coal merchant who held offices on Gt George Street. In 1821 Sandown Hall was advertised for sale: "The Mansion, Stables, Outbuildings, Grounds comprising the Eastern part of the beautiful and valuable estate in Wavertree called Sandown. 19 Statute acres formerly in occupation of Mr Willis Earle". The next recorded occupier of Sandown Hall in 1821 was George Littledale, from Whitehaven, who married in 1822 but died, aged 43, only four years later. Then, in about 1827, the most famous family ever to occupy Sandown Hall - and indeed any of the many mansions around Wavertree Village - moved in. These were the Hornbys: Hugh Hornby, a merchant specialising in trade with Russia, and his wife Louise Cortazzi, daughter of a former British Consul in Smyrna. Hugh Hornby, whose roots were in Kirkham, near Blackpool, had travelled extensively before settling down in Everton in 1823. Everton was at that time a much sought-after place to live "for the salubrity of its air, and its vicinity to the sea, it may not inaptly be called the Montpelier of the county", commented Baines's Lancashire Directory in 1824, and Hugh and his brother Joseph Hornby were just two of the many wealthy men who had made it their home. (The family firm - H.& J. Hornby & Co. had its offices in the Exchange Buildings, behind Liverpool Town Hall).
However by 1826 Hugh had decided to leave Everton for the even more rural surroundings of Wavertree, where the Sandown estate on the slopes of Olive Mount offered similar benefits of an elevated situation, fresh breezes and views of the setting sun. In 1851 Hugh and Louise still had five children (aged 13-25) living at home, and the Census records them as employing ten resident servants at Sandown Hall: a governess, a butcher, a coachman, a groom, a cook, a lady's maid, a laundry maid, a house maid, an 'under house maid' and a dairy maid.
The Hornby family was well-known in Liverpool for a number of different reasons. Hugh Hornby was Mayor of the town in 1838, having been a member of the Council for many years. His nephew Thomas Dyson Hornby was a merchant, and Chairman of the Mersey Docks & Harbour Board: Hornby Dock having been named after him in 1884. Most celebrated of all, though, was to be Hugh's eldest son, Hugh Frederick Hornby ('Fred' to his friends) who took little interest in business affairs but spent a lifetime amassing a collection of rare books, prints and autographs in his house, Sandown Lodge, which was situated only a short distance away from the Hall. When H. F. Hornby died in 1899 he bequeathed this collection to the City, together with the sum of £10,000 to pay for a building to house it in. The result today is the Hornby Library, part of the Central Libraries complex in William Brown Street. As merchants and other wealthy families moved to Wavertree, a series of housing estates grew up to accommodate them. The Sandown estate, Olive Mount and Victoria Park (known as the Lake House Estate) all housed a new class of people. Then in the 1920s, following the death of the three Hornby sisters who had inherited the estate from their widowed mother, Sandown Hall was acquired by Crawfords Biscuits (whose factory was close to Meccano in Binns Road) for use as a sports and social club. Sports pitches were laid out, and a few houses for senior staff were built in the grounds and in the late 1840s it became the site of Sandown Park. With the declining interest in outdoor recreation, some of the pitches later fell into disuse, and in 1977 a large part of the estate was sold to Merseyside Improved Houses. Meanwhile, a new estate of private homes had been built on the other side of Long Lane, on the Wavertree Recreation Company's tennis courts. In 1989 the City Council announced its intention of selling-off its own part of the Sandown estate. Fortunately a campaign of resistance, led by the Wavertree Society, was successful and the field is now designated as Public Open Space. A few months later, however, planning permission was granted for the building of yet more houses on what remained of the company sports ground, behind the Hall.
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| The 'votive column' which has been created from relics of Sandown Hall, |
Sadly, during September 2000, the bulldozers moved in and Sandown Hall was razed to the ground. The resultant pile of earth and rubble was pictured in the Liverpool Echo. Listed Building Consent for the demolition of Sandown Hall was granted by the Secretary of State subject to a legal agreement securing the salvage of some components of the building: the tripartite windows on the side elevations and the portico, the pediment and cornice on the south front. We understand that this 'Section 106' agreement - a draft of which was circulated at the Public Inquiry in October 1998 - included the following clauses: "The Owners ... agree and undertake with the Council ... that ... they will not undertake the demolition of ... the Building ... unless the Features have first been removed from the Building in accordance with a Scheme which shall have been prepared by the Owners ... to which the Council has signified its agreement in writing ...
"the Scheme shall include a method statement which shall deal with the following matters: ... the removal of the Features in such a manner as to enable them to be preserved either on the Site or at another location to be specified by the Council; ... the handing over of the Features into the ownership and possession of the Council."
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2023/03/historic-liverpool-dwellings-druids.html
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