Woolton Hall

Woolton Hall
Woolton Hall in 2020.
Location	Woolton
Nearest city	Liverpool
Coordinates	53°22′18″N 2°51′54″W / 53.3718°N 2.8649°W / 53.3718; -2.8649
Area	3.92 acres (15,900 m2)
Built	1704
Built for	Richard Molyneux
Restored	1772
Restored by	Robert Adam
Architectural style(s)	Classical
Listed Building – Grade I
Designated	28 June 1982
Reference no.	1217943
Location in Merseyside

Woolton Hall is a former country house located in Woolton, a suburb of Liverpool, England, and one of the oldest buildings in the city. Built in 1704 and extensively renovated in 1772 by the influential architect Robert Adam, it was regarded as the finest example of Adam interiors in the North of England.

Throughout its first 200 years, the building was the residence of a number of notable figures, including the Earl of Sefton and Liverpool shipowner Frederick Richards Leyland. During the 20th century, the hall went through a number of uses, eventually becoming a school in the 1950s, and later being abandoned with plans for its demolition. A campaign against its destruction was successful and the hall was made a Grade I listed building in 1982. Despite this, it continued to deteriorate and was declared at "immediate risk" by Historic England in 2021. There was a fire in 2019, suspected of being arson, and in August 2025 the hall was largely destroyed in another fire, also attributed to arson.

Early records indicate that the land of Woolton Hall had been occupied since 1180 when the area of Much Woolton (now simply Woolton) came under the lordship of the holy Catholic order of the Knights Hospitaller who held the land for almost 360 years until the English Reformation. In the 16th century, Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries suppressed the Knights Hospitaller leading the land being confiscated but then later restored by Mary I. The land was permanently confiscated from the order in 1559 under Elizabeth I and was kept by the crown until 1609. Eventually, the land came under ownership of the Brettarghs of Holt who were reputed to have acquired it from an ancient family named "de Woolton".^[1]

On the death of William Brettargh in 1609, the land was described as being home to a cottage.^[2] Sometime between 1700 and 1704, the house and surrounding estate was sold to politician Richard Molyneux, 1st Viscount Molyneux, who built the northern block of the hall.^[3]

1781 watercolour by Paul Sandby

1819 engraving by J.P. Neale

In 1772, Woolton Hall was acquired by Nicholas Ashton, a former High Sheriff of Lancashire, whose father was one of the original undertakers and the principal financier of Sankey Canal, the first canal of the British Industrial Revolution. Shortly afterwards, Ashton commissioned the noted architect Robert Adam to remodel and expand the building extensively.^[4]

Nicholas Ashton died in 1833, leaving the house to his son Joseph Ashton, who in turn left it to his son Charles Ellis Ashton. Charles Ellis later sold the house in 1865 to James Reddecliffe Jeffery who was the owner of Liverpool's largest department store, Compton House, located on Church Street. A fire at the store on 1 December 1865 destroyed much of Jeffery's uninsured stock, eventually leading to the business failing. Jeffery put the hall up for auction in 1869 but failed to find a buyer until 1877 when Liverpool shipowner Frederick Richards Leyland purchased the house for £19,000, moving in with his family from nearby Speke Hall.^[5] Leyland, who was somewhat of an art enthusiast, decorated the house with paintings of varying styles including Edward Burne-Jones's Night and Day and Ford Madox Brown's The Entombment.^[6][7] Leyland later sold the building to the McGuffies, a family of shipowners who demolished the west wing and converted the remainder into a Hydropathic Hotel. After living there for some 30 years, the hotel closed in 1912.^[8]

After a short spell as the headquarters of the Middlesex Regiment and as an army hospital in the 1950s, the building was converted into a fee-paying girls' school under the management of the Convent of Notre Dame.^[9] In 1970, the small school merged with Notre Dame High School located on Mount Pleasant to form Notre Dame Woolton (now St Julie's Catholic High School). As the school expanded, new modern buildings were built nearby leading to Woolton Hall being abandoned.^[10]

Soon, the building fell into disrepair, eventually being marked for demolition in the 1980s. The building was saved after local resident John Hibbert purchased the Hall and spent £100,000 in refurbishments;^[11] soon after, on 28 June 1982, Woolton Hall became a Grade I listed building.^[12] In 2005, there were plans to convert the house into a retirement home and build 62 other new retirement flats on the grounds of the estate.^[13] In 2021, following years of stagnation, a fire in outbuildings in 2019 which was attributed to arson^[14][15][16] and incidents of vandalism, the building was added to Historic England's "Heritage at Risk Register" as a category A site, the highest priority, meaning the building is at "immediate risk of further rapid deterioration or loss of fabric".^[17][18][19] A second fire on the night of 19 August 2025 gutted the house, the roof collapsing entirely.^{[16][20][21][22]} Teenagers had been observed gathering near the building before the fire broke out; a fourteen-year-old was arrested and bailed on suspicion of arson.^[23]

• Molyneux family 1704–1766
• Rev Bartholomew Booth 1771-1772
• Ashton family 1772–1865
• Judge James Reddecliffe Jeffery 1865–1877
• Sir Frederick Leyland 1877–1898
• Captain Peter McGuffie 1898–1948
• Sisters of Notre Dame 1948–1970
• Mr J.B. Hibbert & family 1980 – c.1985
• Jim Murray c.1985 - c.2005
• Jim Murray and Abid Chudary c.2005 - Present

The slate-roofed two-storey structure is built entirely of stone. Seven bay windows, two of which break forward under pediments, had architraves and were sashed with glazing bars. The façade of the building was re-fronted in 1865 by Robert Adam to include a porte-cochère which covers the entrance. This consists of four paired Doric columns between rusticated antae, entablature and balustrade.^[12]

Tapestry Room.

Principal staircase

Immediately inside the front entrance was a large lobby flanked by two main halls. Floored with marble, the lobby contained an imposing oak fireplace designed by Adam. Of three doors adjacent to the fireplace, the leftmost allowed access to a kitchen area and a stairwell. The door directly to the left of the fireplace led to an octagonal turquoise room with a decorated ceiling containing a circular painting of Frederic Leighton's The Garden of the Hesperides. The door on the right led to the main staircase.^[24]

Of the two main halls, the left was a function room with two full-length windows, a stone set bar and fireplace and a back kitchen area. Its ceiling was decorated with painted gold foliage surrounding a bust of a man dressed in 18th-century clothing. On the right side of the building was a dance hall which adjoined a tapestry room with high ceilings and oak-panelled walls.^[24] The dance hall, with two large front-facing windows, was decorated with paintings of previous residents and a large portrait of Queen Anne hanging above a brick fireplace. Next to this was a wooden bar area that led into the tapestry room. The parquet dance floor had has been damaged, to reveal stone flooring underneath. The tapestry room, an elongated semi-circular area, was decorated with mostly Flemish paintings and two glass candle-style chandeliers. Set back to back with the dance hall's fireplace was another fireplace in mirror image, this time with a portrait of King George III hanging above.

The principal staircase ascending to the second floor was another of Adam's renovations, and had a wrought iron baluster and a moulded mahogany handrail.^[1]

The upper floors had large, open rooms with ceilings by Adam, as well as several smaller rooms which were used at different periods as bedrooms and classrooms.^[25]

The hall contained a number of replica paintings, including those of former residents; most of the originals had been relocated to the Walker Art Gallery.

• Tapestry Room
• 
  Officers of the St. George Civic Guard, Haarlem – Frans Hals
• 
  Banquet of the officers of the Calivermen Civic Guard, Haarlem – Frans Hals
• 
  Canterbury Pilgrims – William Blake
• 
  Twelfth-night – David Teniers the Younger
• 
  Revelry at an Inn – Jan Steen
• 
  The Peasant Wedding – Pieter Brueghel the Elder
• 
  A School for Boys and Girls – Jan Steen

• Dance Hall
• 
  Lady Mary Molyneux – Jacob Huysmans
• 
  A man of the Molyneux family, possibly 4th Viscount Molyneux – Unknown Artist
• 
  Mrs John Ashton – Joseph Wright of Derby
• 
  Sir Richard Molyneux, 1st Baronet – Unknown Artist
• 
  A man of the Molyneux family – Unknown Artist
• 
  Mary Molyneux – Unknown Artist
• 
  Frederick Leyland – Rosa Corder (1853–1893)
• 
  Architect, Robert Adam
• 
  Queen Ann
• 
  King George III

• Architecture of Liverpool
• Grade I listed buildings in Liverpool

Other Grade II* or above listed buildings in Woolton:

• Cedarwood
• Much Woolton Old School
• St. Peter's Church, Woolton

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Woolton Hall.

• Historic England - Woolton Hall
• The History of Woolton Hall