Scarisbrick Lodge, the Southport home of Sir Charles Scarisbrick from 1888 until his death in 1923 was up until recently, a building that I had never seen an image of anywhere, not in a book or anywhere online. Luckily, I was fortunate enough to purchase an 1890’s guidebook which happened to have one in!
Scarisbrick Lodge as pictured in a guide book c1896
The property stood on a huge plot on the northwest corner of Leyland Road & Queens Road and was originally called Home Leigh. It was built in 1870 for Philip Stephenson Esq, who hailed from Gateshead. In the 1851 census, Philip is listed as a railway contractor. It’s a familiar name Stephenson with the railways, isn’t it? Well, according to the Liverpool Weekly Courier writing after Philip’s death, he was apparently related to the ‘Father of the Railways’, George Stephenson. In the 1861 census he is listed as a ‘Landed Proprietor’, then living on the Wirral. I will estimate that Philip Stephenson moved to Southport c1869. He is listed at 2 Queens Road in the 1870 electoral register. The pull to the town is likely to have been the creation of the new high class residential district of Hesketh Park, which was kick-started following the opening of the park in May 1868 and the implementations carefully put in place by Charles Hesketh with regard to paving & roads that were to encircle the new park.
Comparison picture, showing the approx. viewpoint today
In the 1871 census, the family are recorded at 37 Queens Road, with Philip this time listed as a retired engineer. His second wife, Elizabeth is with him, plus a visitor and two servants. There is also a separate entry at the very end of the enumerators papers, showing what appears to be a property named Home Leigh with just two servants living there, both from Liverpool: Isabella Reilly, a 26 year old cook and Sarah Jackson, a 19 year old housemaid. This means one of two things in my opinion; Home Leigh wasn’t quite finished at the time that the 1871 census was taken or, Home Leigh was originally numbered 37 as development in the area continued, as the entry following No.37 is an uninhabited house. It’s also possible that just the servants were living there as the house was being completed or maybe they were in the coach house to the rear and were recorded later, but this is usually accounted for in the enumerators notes. Also in the year 1870, Philip was put forward as a candidate for Southport’s East Ward at a meeting at the nearby Imperial Hotel. The Stephenson’s are recorded at Home Leigh in directories and electoral registers up until 1878. The extent of the property and grounds can be gained from the following advert which appeared in the Wigan Observer in October 1878.
Wigan Observer 18.10.1878 (British Newspaper Archive https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk)
Philip passed away in September 1889 and left an estate worth almost £28,000, worth approximately £4.4 million today. He was living on nearby Park Road when he died and is buried with family members in Duke Street.
Stephenson family monument at Duke Street. (D.Walshe 2023)
In 1877, two sisters, Edith and Annie Macrae from Birkenhead were staying in what was then the one year old Prince of Wales Hotel on Lord Street. It’s possible that during their stay they took a stroll to Hesketh Park and noticed the fine residences along Queens Road as by the time the 1881 census was taken, they had moved into No.21. At this time, Home Leigh, then numbered 41 Queens Road, was uninhabited, not even being listed in the directory for the same year. Over at No.21, The Misses Macrae had with a companion boarding with them and four servants. The sisters were recorded as having shares in the canals & railways, therefore quite possible that they knew Philip Stephenson. They were born c1852, daughters of cotton broker, John Wrigley Macrae, who was originally from Bolton. In 1871 they were residing at the family home in Aigburth, Liverpool. By at least 1882, the Misses Macrae were residing at Home Leigh, being recorded there in the 1882/83 directory. The pair became well known benefactors to Southport during their time in the town. On an annual basis, they provided a ‘grand tea’ to the patients at the Virginia Street Infirmary. The Southport Visiter remarked in February 1886 that the Misses had, ‘the eatables cooked at their own residence, and afterwards removed to the Infirmary’.
Home Leigh shown on the 1889/90 OS Town Plan. (Reproduced with kind permission from the National Library of Scotland Map images - National Library of Scotland (nls.uk)
In this same year, they gave £500 towards the endowment of two cots in the Pilkington Children's Ward. In 1887, they gave two separate donations toward the cost of a new lifeboat totalling over £1000, and which was duly named after them, the Edith & Annie. A new lifeboat memorial, an obelisk sculpted by Thomas Robinson and still standing on the promenade today, was unveiled in June 1888, with the Misses Macrae being named as the benefactors upon the sculpture. It was also in 1888 that the sisters departed Home Leigh.
Lifeboat Memorial, Promenade, Southport.
The Misses Macrae named upon the Obelisk
John Liddle, in his essay, Estate Management and land reform politics, tells us that, ‘In 1888, on urging of local Conservative and Anglican clergymen, Charles (later Sir) Scarisbrick, the youngest of the three beneficiaries of his father’s estate, came to reside in Southport in a carefully considered attempt to heal old wounds and weaken the radical campaign’. Scarisbrick family expert, Mary Ormsby, provides us with the following details re Sir Charles:
He was born in London in 1839, the second son of Charles Scarisbrick Esq. of Scarisbrick Hall and his mistress Mary Ann Braithwaite. Charles and his older brother William were initially educated at a small prep school in Bournemouth run by Edward G Bayley, being later education was at Highgate Grammar School. On 9th May 1860, which was only a few days after his father’s death, he married Bertha Petronella, daughter of Ernst Marquard Schonfield, a well-known jeweller, of Hanau on Main and Dusseldorf in Germany. Their first stay in Southport was with Mr. Talbot, one of the Scarisbrick Trustees, who resided at Bank House on Lord Street and following his death, they dwelt at a house in Park Road which is where they appear in the 1881 census.
In the 1891 census, only the servants were recorded at Queens Road, (the building still being known then as Home Leigh). It was a pattern of Sir Charles’ life that he regularly spent March and April in Germany. In addition, the family liked to winter in the Riviera and had a villa in Menton. In 1889 he was an unsuccessful Conservative candidate in the local municipal elections. Like his father, he was a reticent man, but he gradually overcame this and became more involved in local affairs. He became President of the Conservative & Unionist Association, a County Magistrate in 1889, the Mayor of the Borough in 1901, President of Ormskirk and Southport Agricultural Society in 1902 and Park Ward Councillor from 1903-1906. Sir Charles was knighted on the December 18th, 1903, and in 1904 he was made Deputy Lieutenant of Lancashire. He resigned from his public roles in 1906 on the stated reason of ‘ill health’.
By the early C20th it appears that the Scarisbrick’s had dropped the name Home Leigh and had re-named the property Scarisbrick Lodge. They regularly had guests come and stay with them, the Manchester Courier reporting in January 1906 that, ‘Sir Charles Scarisbrick has placed Scarisbrick Lodge at the disposal of Mr Marshall Hall, K.C., M.P., during the contest in the Southport Division’. It was Marshall Hall who famously described High Parkers (likely Liberal supporters) as ‘Zulus’. Austen Chamberlain also stayed at Queens Road with Sir Charles and Lady Scarisbrick when he attended the annual conference of the Lancashire and Cheshire Conservative Working Men’s Federation in 1910.
Edward Marshall Hall outside Scarisbrick Lodge in a Vulcan Car (Courtesy of Mark Chatterton)
Sir Charles Scarisbrick (Courtesy of Mary Ormsby)
Mary Ormsby continues their story:
In 1906, Charles resigned as President of the Southport Conservative Association and member of the Southport Council because of continued ill-health. Following this, Charles and Bertha spent some time recovering at Castle Puchof on Bavaria and then at Wesibaden. When WW1 broke out, Sir Charles and his wife were staying in the Russicher Hof (later the Eden Hotel) in Munich, again for health reasons. Charles was arrested and placed in confinement. At Christmas 1914 Charles’ son was informed that he was a Prisoner of War in the Ruhleben internment camp near Berlin. Ruhleben was a civilian detention camp in Germany. The camp was originally a harness racing track laid out north of the Berlin-Hamburg Railway line in 1908. Sadly, Bertha died in Munich on 28th April 1915. Her remains were temporarily interred in the Munich Cemetery at Wald Friedhof.
After the war, in 1922, her remains were returned to Southport and re-interred in the Scarisbrick Mausoleum at Crossens which had been built by the Scarisbrick Trustees between 1899-1901. In the report of her will it is stated that she was ‘a prominent Roman Catholic’, and she left an unsettled estate of the gross value of £11,168, with net personality £3,919. In her will she left £200 to Sarah Jump, if she was still in her service at her death; £15 per annum to her former cook, Margaret Spahn; £100 to Elizabeth Blackburn, if in her service her death; £100 to John James Cockshott, and the residue of her estate upon trust for her two daughters for life, with remainder to her son for life. Several of the newspaper accounts of her death refer to her as being ‘widely known for her many activities, and highly esteemed for her generosity to the poor of Southport and district’.
Sir Charles & Lady Bertha (Courtesy of Mary Ormsby)
Sir Charles Scarisbrick returned from Germany in September 1915 and initially went to stay with his son at Greaves Hall. He died at Scarisbrick Lodge on 14th January 1923 after a short illness. His estate was valued at £14575 16s 1d. His will directed that all private correspondence was to be destroyed as soon as possible after his death and that various articles of furniture should be moved to Greave Hall to become heirlooms. His funeral service was conducted by the Vicars of All Saints, Crossens and Banks and he was interred alongside his wife in the Crossens Mausoleum. As well as listing the various offices he had held, his obituary stated: “Had resided in town since 1888, but long before that he was well known in and closely associated with it. As a landowner he took a great interest in the development of the borough, and he was largely responsible for the reclamation marsh land on Southport foreshore, land which is now valuable agricultural land. Through his efforts to the trustees were encouraged to sell land at one half its market value for churches and schools and in some cases the land was transferred free of cost. This was the case with Southport Infirmary, on the opening day of which he handed the chairman a cheque. For £7000 for the endowment of a cot in the children’s ward, to be named the “Bertha Ward after his wife”.
(A personal aside to this is that Elizabeth Blackburn, who was named in Bertha’s will and who was recorded with them in both the 1901 & 1911 census, was my second great grand aunt. In 1901, her sister Alice was also there, listed as a kitchen-maid. The Blackburn’s were a large family that moved to Southport in the mid-late 1860s with the men specialising in shoemaking and butchery. Both Alice & Elizabeth were born in Southport).
Scarisbrick Family Mausoleum, Crossens, Southport. (D.Walshe 2023)
Internal image of the Mausoleum (Courtesy of Paul Sherman- North West Heritage CIC)
Two months after Sir Charles’ death, a series of auctions took place relating to Scarisbrick Lodge. The first on 10th March 1923 was for the sale of the property. The local auctioneers J. Hatch, Sons & Fielding and their report on the day of the auction read like this:
Ladies & Gentlemen,
Most of you present will be aware from the advertisements that we are here this afternoon to sell by auction this fine freehold residence, and as it is now 3 o’clock I shall be much obliged if those present will give me their attention for about 10 minutes. I intend to be brief in my remarks so as to not interfere very much with those of you that have come to view only the furniture. May I say I am delighted to see so many present. I fully appreciate the housing shortage, and though as ana Auctioneer, I am gifted with imagination, I cannot stretch it to the limit of thinking you have all come to buy this property. At the same time, I know several of you are really keenly interested in the sale, and therefore appeal to those who are not to be as possible, so that the bona fide buyers may hear all I have to say.
The auctioneer continued to make the crowd aware of certain fixtures and fittings that were not included in the sale including the oak gates and two anthracite stoves. They then proceeded to discuss the property and offer suggestions as to what could become of the site:
With regard to the residence itself, I think you will all have been surprised with this majestic hall and the noble expanse of the reception rooms. The late Sir Charles Scarisbrick bought the house in 1881, (This given year is either a typing error or a mistake by the auctioneer as Charles didn’t move into the property until 1888 and the Misses Macrae were there from at least 1882 and as we have learned, it was uninhabited in the 1881 census) and subsequently enlarged same by the addition of the wing on my left and later he extended again by adding the wing facing Leyland Road to give his maids better quarters then they had below. I spoke a few days ago to the architect who acted for Sir Charles, and he then told me that this property has cost Sir Charles altogether about £12,000 to £15,000.
One of the special features about this sale is the fact that not only is it site freehold and free from chief rent, but that it is free from restrictive covenants, about which we hear so much in Southport. You have here a site of 5582 square yards, and I suggest that in this position, if properly developed by erecting new buildings on the site, and letting of plots on lease, it should produce in ground rents nearly £300 a year, in addition to which a premium could be obtained for the road expenses which are all paid. If flats and shops were erected the sum I have mentioned should be materially increased.
On the other hand some of you may have ideas of converting this house into flats, or using it for a private hotel, school, nursing home, or public institution, for any of which purpose it is easily adapted and a portion of the land on the Leyland Road frontage could be let or sold off without spoiling the residence for the purpose I have named, and an income derived also from the cottage and stables at the rear, which are very commodious, and would let at a good rental as a garage in this position.
As some of you know the adjoining site was also sold free of restrictions and today, we see a handsome block of shops and flats which in this position will always command a good class of tenants at rentals which must be a source of profit to the owner. He deserves same for his enterprise, but there is no reason why this site should not be a similar success developed on somewhat similar lines.
The auctioneer then invited bidding on the property to commence. Newspaper reports on Monday 12th reported that the auction was withdrawn at just £5,250.00. Two day later on March 12th, a six day auction took place at Scarisbrick lodge, finishing on the following Monday. The details of which are pictured below along with some of the items that were available, courtesy of Mary Ormsby.
All above images courtesy of Mary Ormsby
Street directories show that the house remained empty through the remainder of the 1920’s and right up until 1934, which was the year it was demolished, the property standing for just sixty-four years. It is interesting to note that in the 1930/31 directory, ‘Lodge Cottage’ was occupied, with a D. H. Strafford residing there. In 1933/34 it was occupied still, R. W. Hirst being the last known occupier of this ‘very commodious’ outbuilding. The Lancashire Evening Post reported in February 1934 that:
Southport Mansion Site May Be Built Upon
Plans will shortly be submitted to the Corporation for developing the site of Scarisbrick Lodge, Queen Drive (sic), Southport which was for many years the residence of the late Sir Charles Scarisbrick, as a housing estate. The Mansion has been standing empty for the last seven or eight years and stands on an important site in the town. A local firm which contemplates developing the area has received favourable support from the Corporations Plans Sub-Committee and full details will be submitted to the Corporation shortly.
The houses that occupy the site today were built following the demolition with only the gateposts remaining, now serving 63 & 69 Queens Road.
Gate posts to Scarisbrick Lodge still present (D.Walshe 2023)
In the late spring of 1960, an interesting occurrence took place when the resident of 65 Queens Road (built on the site of Scarisbrick Lodge) discovered an old key whilst digging in the garden. Many local & regional newspapers covered the story, with a picture of the mysterious key appearing in the Cheshire Observer in June 1960. The key had a tag attached to it with ‘beautiful copperplate handwriting’ bearing the inscription: The Key to Old Chester Castle.
The Key, as pictured in the Cheshire Observer, June 1960. (British Newspaper Archive https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk)
It was sent to the Grosvenor Museum in Chester with the curator Mr. F. H. Thompson concluding that the five-and-a-half inch long key likely dated from the C15th. He said it was probably not the main entrance but probably belonged to one of the other rooms on the castle site. I think it is likely that this relic was previously hidden somewhere in the house by one of the former residents, becoming buried in what became the rear garden during the demolition in 1934.
David J. Walshe (Secret Sand Land) ©2023 (with special thanks to the contributions of Mary Ormsby).
Sources mentioned where possible within the text.
Thanks also to Gillian Morgan of Crosby Library.
Online resources used:
Ancestry.com
British Newspaper Archive
National Library of Scotland (Maps)
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