THE RIFFEL (continued):

Owners and Occupiers:

This house does not appear in the 1861 census leading us to wonder whether it had yet been finished. In the first M.W. (Much Woolton) Rates Book of 1867 we find William Peek as occupier of this house R.V. £230. We suspect him of being a tea merchant (Peek Bros. & Winch) but can find no trace of him in the Directory, though in 1857 there was a William Richard Winch, tea merchant living in M.W. By 1868 he had gone and the occupier was James Adam, a fruit broker from Mount Vernon Green. The firm had been started in 1819 by James's father and three brothers who shipped fruit from Portugal to Liverpool. From the 1871 census we learn that he was then 42, born in Liverpool and his wife Penelope age 30 was a British Subject born in Portugal. They were here with 3 daughters Edith 8, Beatrice 4, Penelope 1, James's son-in-law John 14, born in Portugal and three servants. This year the R.V. was increased to £250 and in 1876 to £300. By 1877 James Adam had moved to Belem Tower, Sefton Park and The Cave, in Heswall.

The house was empty till 1860 when James Garnock Jones became tenant (with R.V. reduced to £250 - by the Assessment Committee of the Prescot Union). He, his wife Alice 26 and their 3 children had all been born in Liverpool, they had 4 servants and Thomas Clare, the gardener at the lodge. James, himself, in this 1881 census was 33 and a rope manufacturer employing 24 hands.

They stayed until 1883 - the year when all the R.V's (? in M.W.) went down - and he is next heard of in the 1889 Directory as a 'ship handler' living in Sandown Park. In 1884 the new occupier was William Tod, stock & share broker (Ashton, Tod & Noble), with a R.V. of £204. We see from the 1881 census that he was 29, married to Amy age 28 born in Ireland, and they were living then at 16 Garston Old Road with their daughter Edith age 1 and 3 servants. Mr Tod, born c.1854, the son of Archibald and Harriet Tod had been brought up at Woolton Grange in Speke Road. They remained at The Riffel until 1901 when they moved to Dry Grange in Allerton and the house was empty for six years.

Alfred George Dent was the next tenant in 1907 (when the R.V. had dropped to £161 10s 0d). Mr Dent had just become the General Manager of the Liverpool & London & Globe Insurance Co., started in 1836 by Swinton Boult & George Holt the cotton broker, both Unitarians. By 1917 Mr Dent had moved to Curzon House, Curzon Park, Chester.

continued . . .