Introduction to Woolton Park and its environs (continued)

Financial backing would also have been needed to pay for road-building and other parts of the infrastructure - costs which would be recouped when sites for houses were sold. There must have been a survey and plan for the shape of the road and the boundaries of the sites, at the least; but whether this was a full-blown design by an architect remains unknown to us. From as early as 1856 there were 'planning constraints' in the form of Covenants - that no buildings except "dwelling houses or villas" not of less value than £500 (annually) should be erected, they were to be not less than 10 yards from the road, and there was a clause excluding beerhouses, separate tenements and what we now class as offensive trades, to safeguard the quality of the development and its environment.

* Both Miss Gnosspelius and Mrs Lewis have seen this name somewhere in the Liverpool Record Office, years ago, and over three months of hunting and badgering the kindly staff, have quite failed to find it again.

Infrastructure

In developing an estate certain preliminaries are needed before sites can be built upon or offered for sale.

1. Roads

Woolton Hill Road was 'laid out' as a result of the 1805 Enclosure Act. The allotting of 'township quarries' was, among other things, intended to provide a supply of stone for road-making and construction involving the building of stone boundary walls about 3½ ft high. Because the width here was 40 ft we assume a road and footpaths on either side. At this period the cambered carriageways of public roads were surfaced with broken stone - how much native rock intruded in Red Brow we can only surmise - and there would have been drainage gutters at either side with a kerb. Two generations later in 1867 the kerbs were Woolton stone and the footway on the south side, at least, had a stone drain beneath it. (Tarmacadam surfacing only came within living memory.)

continued . . .