Another local resident was John Hays Wilson, a brassfounder who was also chairman of Liverpool town council's Water Committee. He died in 1881, having caught a chill at a horseracing meeting held in the grounds of his home, Lee Hall. The people of Gateacre paid for a picturesque memorial: the hexagonal sandstone structure (originally housing a drinking fountain) which remains a well-known local landmark on the corner of Grange Lane.

It was Sir Andrew Barclay Walker who donated the land for the Wilson Memorial and who, at about the same time, gave the nearby Black Bull pub its 'mock Tudor' look. A few years earlier, in 1877, he had provided land in Halewood Road for a new Church of England school, and converted the old school building in Grange Lane into a reading room, later to become the Gateacre Institute. And it was Sir Andrew's son, William Hall Walker - later Lord Wavertree - who built stables for his polo ponies (now Grange Mews) in 1895, and 'model' houses (Soarer Cottages) for his married grooms in 1896 to commemorate his Grand National victory.