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SANDOWN HALL, WAVERTREE -
A GREEK REVIVAL VILLA
Sandown Hall was built in 1810 for Willis Earle, a Liverpool merchant. It became one of a cluster of imposing residences that were built at that time in the countryside around the city. As a proud and impressive house and estate it conveyed the new wealth and confidence of the period.
The house, built from red sandstone, comprised the main family residence with servants quarters, built from brick, at the rear. From the mid 1800's to 1928 Sandown Hall became the home of the Hornby family. Hugh Hornby was a very successful merchant and one time Mayor of Liverpool. The heyday of the Hall and estate would have been during this period. Extensive gardens developed around the Hall with a walled garden, orchard, generous lawns and sweeping groves of trees and shrubs. Collections of outbuildings were sited to the rear of the house and facilitated the smooth running of the house. These included dairy, stables, coach house, green houses etc. The architectural importance of Sandown Hall can be gained by its inclusion in Liverpool's first statutory list of historic buildings in 1952.
Architectural descriptions
Sir Nikolaus Pevsner was a twentieth-century writer on art and architecture. He visited and praised Sandown Hall during his series of architectural guides, which covered every English County and recorded every noteworthy building:
"Along Long Lane to Olive Lane and to Sandown Hall, early C19, of two storeys and five bays, stuccoed. Three-bay pediment, porch of paired unfluted Ionic columns. On the side elevations two tripartite windows with columns - a handsome job. "
From The Buildings of England, South Lancashire by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (1969)
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