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| Bronte House ( at the road junction ) |
Sleepers Hill was once denoted an area of six or seven acres of gorse and bracken, sloping down towards the cluster of roofs which was Kirkdale village. It was not its first name as the district was originally enclosed from the surrounding common land by a man who called it 'Cobbler’s Close', and this was the name it was known by in 1794, when purchased from the squatter by Mr. Thomas Barton, who had made a fortune in the West Indies. On the site of the squatter’s cottage, Mr. Barton built a good house, which he proudly called 'Pilgrim', after a privateer of that name in which he had a share. The 'Pilgrim', was the Liverpool ship which captured off Barbadoes a French ship called 'La Liberte', the prize realizing 190,000 pounds. On Mr. Barton’s death the property passed to a Mr Atherton, and was by him sold to Mr. Samuel Woodhouse, who in 1813 erected the fine mansion called 'Bronte House'. The house was named after the Bronte in Sicily (Horatio Nelson was made Duke of Bronte in 1799 for assisting Ferdinand III, King of Naples, in suppressing an insurrection).
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| John Woodhouse |
Samuel Woodhouse (1771-1834) was the second son of John Woodhouse senior (1731-1812), a Liverpool merchant residing at West Derby, Liverpool, who was trading in soda ash, the chief export of Sicily at the time. In 1773 he was sailing along the west coast of Sicily to the port of Mazara del Vallo when a storm forced them to take shelter in the small port of Marsala. Whilst in one of Marsala’s taverns John was surprised to taste the high quality local wine, vino perpetuo. This wine tasted similar to Spanish & Portuguese fortified wines that were very popular in England at the time. John decided to ship 50 'pipes' of vino perpetuo back to Liverpool, i.e. 50 'pipes' = 50 barrels, each with a capacity of c.100 gallons. He was concerned the wine would lose its fine qualities on the long sea voyage so he fortified it with brandy. This was how Marsala wine was created. In England the market for Marsala wine grew and vine production needed to increase to meet demand. John’s eldest son, John junior (1770-1826) went out to Sicily in 1787 and the Woodhouse family provided loans to farmers to establish more vineyards. They repaired the main street in Marsala and built a mole (breakwater) to improve the harbour. The family traded as Messrs. Woodhouse and Brothers. Marsala wine was held in such high repute that, at a time when rum was increasingly difficult to obtain, in 1800 the British Government gave orders that the Mediterranean Fleet under the Right Honourable Rear Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson K.B., Duke of Bronte in Sicily, should be supplied with it. The agreement with John junior & William Woodhouse for the delivery of 500 'pipes' within the space of five weeks to his Majesty’s Ships off Malta, was personally signed by 'Bronte Nelson' at Palermo on the 19th of March 1800. Nelson suggested to John that his preferred brand of Marsala should be known as 'Bronte Madeira'.
Bronte House was one of the more opulent villas, as shown on the Everton Tithe Map, 1846. Standing in Walton Lane at the top of Fountains Road and Barry Street, a gate lodge at the junction of Walton Lane and Walton Breck Road marks the start of a long sinuous drive through the landscaped grounds. The house, had a south-facing entrance front and a bow-fronted west elevation overlooking a shrubbery and the distant Mersey. To the north lie the stable yard, kitchen garden and what was probably a gardener's cottage. Only the largest villas, such as Bronte House and Annfield House, had grounds extensive enough to encompass a whole field, and where they did a part might have been cropped as meadow. Writing in 1875, Picton says that the Woodhouse family was still there, that the estate 'still preserves much of its amenity' and that 'the recent formation of Stanley Park, adjoining, has in this respect done good service in rescuing Bronte from the hands of the Philistines in the garb of builders'. A few years later, however, the Philistines inevitably won the battle and the estate was covered with five streets named after prominent Victorian architects and containing hundreds of houses. Bronte House had been demolished and Bodley, Butterfield, Goldie, Paley and Nesfield Streets, with their small terraced houses now occupied the estate. Bronte House was sited closest to Bodley and Butterfield Streets, where the biggest houses were built, so the use of the surplus sandstone there would have required minimal movement of it.
James Moon, a retired merchant who had taken Bronte House, was unusual in having a butler. The house was pulled down and carters removed the bricks to build new property in Bedford-road, Bootle.
Bronte Street is named after the Woodhouse estate in Everton.
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2023/04/historical-liverpool-dwellings-elm-house.html
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