INTRODUCTION (continued)

Now we think we can see stages, the first mainly agricultural with 'High Lee' and market gardening; with also perhaps something to do with file making at 35 & 37 Beaconsfield Road, the Molyneux cottage(s) and an early commuter, Mr Ross, on the other side of the road and John Bibby, the soap boiler, at Newstead.

The second stage was the coming of big houses in the country, Knolle Park the country residence of the man to be Town Clerk, and Beaconsfield with the young attorney Ambrose Lace who soon, not content with his 5 acres, added by purchase and by renting.

But then there was a gap of over 20 years; maybe it can be partly explained by the last of the Okills having died intestate in 1851 (knowingly intestate) and the time it took to settle his estate so that the sites of High Lee, Higher Lee did not become available until 1859, and so on to Lower Lee and Abbots Lee. Or maybe it was a reflection of rising prosperity in Liverpool and the desire and fashion to have a fine house in the country on Beaconsfield Road. Whatever was the driving force, eight new houses were built in the 10 years from 1858, and they endured to 1933, just a century after Ambrose Lace built Beaconsfield - the one building date of which we are really sure.

Stylistically, the walk will show the Gothic Revival evolving from its Romantic and Picturesque un-archaeological Gothick phase towards its serious Victorian phase when it ceased to be merely a fashion and became a moral crusade under the leadership of A. W. N. Pugin (1812-52) when its buildings were structurally Gothic and archaeologically correct, though in the High Victorian period this correctness was departed from by architects seeking bold and original effects.

The Classical buildings to be seen tell an opposite story. They show a style moving from correctness to incorrectness. We see the gradual dissolution of the Georgian Rule of Taste which involved a breakdown of harmonious proportions and an increasing coarseness and heaviness of detailing.

Now, let us see what is to be seen:-

continued . . .