LOWER LEE (continued)

The West garden front was composed around a roughly central crow-stepped gable of small projection with a rectangular bay and 2-light window over. To the right the eaves of the entrance front gable were on a corbel table; 2 square headed windows at ground level, 3-light window above with moulded string at sill level. To the left of crowstep gable, a canted bay with cresting of strapwork; above, first a projecting 2-light dormer window (with the fattest finial of the six visible), beyond another lower dormer with a 1-light window. Some South and West facing ground floor windows were fitted with sunblinds, and the chimney stacks were insignificant.

Style - this house was truly eclectic, which one would expect from a building of that date; it had Gothic barge-boards, a corbel table, pointed windows, even a cusped trefoil to one of the dormers; mixed with Jacobethan strap-work balustrading to two of the ground floor bay windows, as well as a crowstepped gable - a feature of Scotland and also of East Anglia. The random courses of masonry were in keeping with this eclectic style.

In its eclecticism Lower Lee showed one face of Victorian architecture.

Owners and Occupiers - In 1859 Thomas Carey was a 'gentleman', in 1860 an 'estate agent' living in Church Rd Woolton with an office at 6 Parker St. (earlier he had been living in Windsor St.). The 1861 census shows Thomas Carey, aged 52 as a 'fundholder' and Catherine, his wife age also 52 living with their daughter Catherine Smith Carey age 14 and his mother Margaret aged 80 all born in Liverpool, living at Lower Lee with 1 servant. By 1871 census he was describing himself as a 'retired merchant and gentleman' and he and his wife were living with 3 servants, including a butler.

By this time his daughter Catherine Smith Carey (1847-1916) had married Chapple Gill (c.1833-1901/2) on 10th June 1868 at Childwall. Her husband was the son of Robert Gill, a cotton broker of Knotty Cross and R. & C. Gill, joining the business in 1857 and by 1880 head of the firm. (The Gill family is another story). In 1877 Mrs Chapple Gill's portrait was painted, sitting in the drawing room window of Lower Lee, with two of her five children, by James Tissot (1836-1902) - this picture is now in the Walker Art Gallery.

continued . . .